Waiting for the End of the World

So you may have heard about this. Yes, that’s my company. Yes, there were layoffs in my newsroom. No, I was not one of them, but there were many. Yes, I am terrified. To everyone who has written or called, thank you for your concern. No, I don’t know where my paper, or journalism in general, goes from here. I wish I did.

I’m trying to be upbeat about things, but it’s difficult. I have finally found something I do well, something which pays regularly and doesn’t feel like work at all, and just as I’m settling in, the entire business model that has funded this kind of work for centuries collapses. I don’t know what to make of it. Maybe I should have gone to church more. I don’t know.

Anyway, I’m not going to dwell on it here. You clicked over for a silly music column, and a silly music column you shall have. I’ve just received such an outpouring of kindness and support that I thought it deserved a public thank you. So, thank you.

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A Tale of Two Singles

Back in 2002, I’d never heard a Tori Amos song like “A Sorta Fairytale.”

It was the first single from Scarlet’s Walk, her Epic Records debut, and at the time, it was absolutely striking. Never had Tori tried to sound so inoffensive, so accessible and spit-shined. The song was simple to the point of banal – anyone could have written it. But the performance was equally sanded down. That could have been anyone singing, anyone playing the basic piano chords. It ably answered the question “Can Tori Amos ever be truly boring?” with a resounding yes.

As an experiment, “A Sorta Fairytale” was fascinating. Little did I know it would be the blueprint for this once-great artist’s next seven years and counting. With the exception of some of 2007’s American Doll Posse, Amos has made one bland and forgettable pile of fluff after another since ’02. And if you thought she was past all that, think again – her new single, “Welcome to England,” is so forgettable it makes Sarah McLachlan sound like Karen O.

The further Tori gets from her emotionally riveting roots, the more depressing her career arc becomes. Doll Posse showed signs of life, but by all indications, her new one, saddled with the terrible name Abnormally Attracted to Sin, gets back to music for waiting rooms. It’s sad, because she was once the most important female artist in the world. I listened to Boys for Pele again a few weeks ago, and damn, that album is like a gut punch. Then I listened to The Beekeeper, and it floated by without leaving a mark. Where have you gone, Tori?

But if Amos is headed back to sleep, it sounds like the Dave Matthews Band is waking up. In June, they’re going to release Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King, their tribute to saxophonist LeRoi Moore, who died last year after an accident. DMB has been drifting for a while now, and their last record, 2005’s Stand Up, was one of their worst.

They were working on Groogrux before Moore’s death, but his passing seems to have focused them, if advance word is any indication. The first single, “Funny the Way It Is,” is the best Matthews song in many, many years, and the recording pulses with life. Listen to that awesome bridge section, and marvel at drummer Carter Beauford’s punchy, complex work – if he’s not one of the best drummers around right now, I don’t know who is. Check out Boyd Tinsley’s live-sounding fiddle solo, and listen in awe as someone (either Matthews or Tim Reynolds) takes a sky-reaching electric guitar break.

This song is very good, and bodes well for the album. My only complaint is that Moore doesn’t seem to be on it – the band used recordings he made before his death as the basis for many of the songs, and I’m curious to hear how they managed that. Still, it’s not far until June, and for the first time since about 2000 that I’m seriously anticipating a Dave Matthews Band album. That’s what a good single can do.

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The Craft of Khan

The more music I hear, the more certain I am of one thing: I will never hear everything. I miss stuff all the time – I’ve even started up a whole semi-regular section of this column dedicated to Stuff I Missed. But in recent memory, I can’t say I regret missing something as much as Fur and Gold, the first Bat for Lashes album. That’s two years I spent not knowing about Natasha Khan, and I’ll never get that time back.

I can’t remember why I first listened to Bat for Lashes, but it was by accident. The song was “Daniel,” the zippy first single from Khan’s second BFL album, Two Suns. It was unlike anything I’d heard in some time, and Khan’s strange and wonderful voice pulled me in. Curious, I bought Fur and Gold, and was immediately entranced. This was only a couple of weeks ago, mind – I totally missed this train, but I committed to catching the next one the day it came out.

But even Fur and Gold would not have prepared me for the ambitious, nearly perfect Two Suns. This is sublime music, full stop, and I simply cannot stop listening to it.

Perhaps it’s the fact that Tori Amos has fallen off the artistic map. Amos used to make music like this. Not like this in a literal sense, although I hear Amos in the nooks and crannies here, but like this in an emotional sense. This is music that reaches out and moves you, music that grips you right away and then only grows in stature as it seeps its way into your life.

The hardest question to answer here is just what this sounds like. The first touchstone is Kate Bush, naturally – Khan has a high, strong voice that she pushes into a ghostly falsetto, and her melodies are as off-kilter as her instrumentation. Khan has a gift for mood, like Bush does, and her palate focuses on keyboards and pianos most often. Plus, she’s saddled Two Suns with a batty and superfluous (and Bush-like) concept – it’s told from two points of view, bouncing between dark-haired Khan and her blond alter ego, Pearl. You need not know this at all. The music stands on its own very well, thank you.

But Khan has many more influences, and mixes them in with her own original sound. While Two Suns maintains a fairly consistent minor-key mood, no two songs sound quite alike. Some, like “Two Planets,” sound like they were produced by Bjork. Some, like “Peace of Mind,” sound like spectral field recordings, taken around a campfire in another dimension. And some, like the absolutely riveting opener “Glass,” sound like nothing else I know – that one slowly reveals itself, slipping out of deep water one inch at a time, on a bed of synthesizers, bells and thumping hand percussion. The melody is amazing, and it builds and builds relentlessly, Khan finally reaching for those higher-than-high notes in the chorus.

It’s an incredible opening song, a grabber in the most subtle sense, and when the chugging electronic drum beat of the second track, “Sleep Alone,” crashes in, it’s startling – Khan has set the mood so convincingly already. But just listen to the up-up-up chorus melody, buoyed by the dancefloor touches – it’s simply awesome. And third track “Moon and Moon” completes the opening trilogy perfectly, showing Khan’s slower, more beautiful side. This one is most like Tori Amos used to be, a glorious piano figure leading into a haunting refrain.

For 11 tracks and 45 minutes, this album never even starts to suck. “Daniel” is the most invigorating almost-pop song here, its borderline-cheesy drum beat supporting an insidious melody. “Siren Song” harnesses an unstoppable power, moving in a heartbeat from calm waters to raging storms. (Khan’s voice is particularly amazing on this one.) “Good Love” is like a ‘50s ballad done Julee Cruise style, then recorded in an echo chamber on the moon. The album closes with a brief piano coda called “The Big Sleep,” a sort-of duet with the inimitable Scott Walker, and the entire 2:53 is like waiting to fall off a cliff.

I don’t know anyone else making music like this. I wish more people were. I want more music like this, and yet I know that the very things that make Khan an arresting artist also make her unique. I don’t expect to find an album like this one very often – hell, I never really expect to find one like this at all. By following her own muse, Natasha Khan has made something alien, yet beautiful. Two Suns is spellbinding, enveloping, submerging, music that rushes into your lungs and fills them to bursting, gently drowning you while you drift off to blissful, joyous sleep.

I cannot explain it better than that. But let me close with this: if Two Suns is not in my top 10 list at the end of the year, then we’re in for an astonishing next eight months.

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Big Swifty

I’m not entirely sure why I bought Richard Swift’s new album, The Atlantic Ocean.

I’m never quite sure why I buy anything I’ve never heard, to tell you the truth. It’s just a feeling, most of the time, a little nudge. I’ll see an album cover I like, or read a song title that does it for me, or I’ll just get this notion that I should take a gamble on something new. Believe it or not, most of the time, my little hunches pay off. I couldn’t give you a reason, but by my quick reckoning, I’m at about an 80-20 ratio of good surprises to bad ones.

It might have been the title. I’m a fan of vast expanses of water, especially as metaphors. It might have been the cover, a fascinatingly lo-fi cut and paste job right out of the psychedelic ‘60s. It’s the kind of cover you scan for clues, trying to read the names of the books on the shelf, or the records by the turntable. (Those actually do turn out to be clues, but I’ll let you discover them for yourself.) And I did hear one song, the strikingly Motown-sounding “Lady Luck,” but by that point I’d already decided to buy the thing.

So who is Richard Swift? He’s a singer and songwriter and record-maker with a dozen or so prior releases, although I’ve heard none of them. I can’t tell you what he used to sound like, but on The Atlantic Ocean, he inhabits this odd, appealing middle ground between Ray Davies and Thomas Dolby. His voice is almost Dylan, but his soundscapes are part McCartney, part Michael Penn, part ‘80s synth-pop. His songs are mainly in traditional veins, but all have these little melodic moments that stand out. He’s a ‘60s piano-popper with an ‘80s flavor and the soul of a poet.

On some songs, Swift has assembled other musicians to help him, and these are the most organic. “Ballad of Old What’s His Name” is the fullest-sounding here, and even has Ryan Adams sitting in on backing vocals. But songs like “R.I.P.” make great use of the Mellotron and viola. These tunes sound like old-time pop songs. But then there are the ones Swift performed solo, and these rely on computer drums and bizarre ‘80s synthesizer noises, creating something totally different. “Hallelujah, Goodnight” is the weirdest plastic Beatles song you’ll ever hear, and the title track kicks things off by balancing the ‘60s piano with big, fat keyboard brass sounds. Somehow, it works.

And the reason it works? These songs are unfailingly solid. The highlight for me is “The End of an Age,” coincidentally the sparsest thing here – it’s drums and piano, with a trombone solo in the middle. But the melody is just sweet, with the faintest hint of Randy Newman creeping in. “A Song for Milton Feher” is a ’66 Beatles barrelhouse number with synth accents, but you’ll be singing along with the refrain (“I will listen to your every word”). And “Lady Luck” closes things out like a lost Marvin Gaye song, Swift unveiling a surprisingly elastic falsetto. It’s just great.

I’m not sure why I bought The Atlantic Ocean, but I’m glad I did. I’ve cut down on my gambles significantly, what with my uncertain economic situation, but I like this album enough that it’s only going to encourage me to go with my next hunch. And now I’ve got Richard Swift’s entire catalog to track down, too. It’s a rough life, it really is.

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Next week, we explore the joys of effervescent, disposable pop music. I mean, even more effervescent and disposable than the pop music we usually explore.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So the biggest news of the month is that I now have a Facebook page.

I resisted the Cult of Facebook for years, but finally succumbed about a week and a half ago. In that short time, I’ve reconnected with a few people I’d lost track of, and somehow accumulated more than 60 friends. That’s a nice stroke to the ego. 60 people want to be my friend! Thanks, everybody.

Okay, fine, that’s not the biggest news of the month. My vote would go to this. That’s right, the finest catalog in popular music is finally getting the digital upgrade treatment. It’s about damn time, too – the Beatles CDs have been mired in a hissy analog wasteland for too long. It was novel at first, listening to a CD that sounded like a tape from the ‘60s, but after hearing the Love compilation a few years ago, I’ve been salivating for this.

I can’t wait to hear the stereo panning in “I Am the Walrus” in pristine digital clarity. I’m excited to hear the orchestral swells in “A Day in the Life” as if I were in the same room with them. Hell, I’m even jazzed to hear the guitars on “A Hard Day’s Night” ringing in louder and stronger than ever before.

All 13 studio albums, plus the two-disc Past Masters collection, will be available separately, and in what I’m sure will be a beautiful all-in-one box. Additionally, 12 of those discs will be available mixed in mono, in their own box set, in vinyl-replica sleeves. Each album will come with a mini-documentary on its creation, which will be included on DVD in the box set. Needless to say, I’m saving up my pennies now. I’m definitely picking up the stereo box set, and I may spring for the mono one, too.

Hopefully I’ll be able to afford it. Thanks for all the well-wishes over the last week. It’s not emergency time for me yet, but I’ll let you know when you really need to start praying. If you know anyone who needs a good writer, though…

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Finances and timing conspired to make me miss Marillion’s first ever North American convention. It happened in Montreal last weekend, and apparently it was amazing, in a few different ways. As they usually do at these conventions, the band played three shows – one in which they revisit an album front to back, and two themed shows with surprise setlists.

The album this time was Seasons End, which turns 20 this year. The second night was entitled “Tracks of Our Years,” and found the band playing one song from nearly every year of their existence, starting with the new stuff and heading back as far as 1987. But it was the third night that caused all the buzz – it was called “The Epic Evening,” and it contained most of the group’s 10-plus-minute songs.

Evidently, what was intended to be the emotional high point, the incredible 15-minute “This Strange Engine,” was plagued with technical difficulties and missed sections, and singer Steve Hogarth, frustrated, threw himself on the mercy of the crowd, literally. He dove into their waiting arms and crowd-surfed while the band played on, then returned to the stage for the final crescendo (“This love…”). Far from being a disaster, the fans that night describe this performance of “Engine” as the truest connection they’ve ever had with this band, a room full of reciprocal, unconditional love. I can’t wait for the DVD to see if that comes across.

I missed the show, but I can soothe my pain with two new releases from the Marillion camp. The first is a two-CD live album called Happiness is Cologne, recorded in Cologne, Germany. Marillion live albums are always of sterling quality, but this one is simply superb. I hesitate to refer people to live albums to get a taste of a band, but in this case, you can’t go wrong.

For one thing, there’s a healthy concentration on last year’s Happiness is the Road, one of the finest albums they’ve made. They play more than half of the first volume, Essence, including the great “This Train is My Life,” and three songs from the slightly inferior second volume, The Hard Shoulder. They do plunk their way through the one song that still doesn’t work for me, “The Man From the Planet Marzipan,” but they make up for that with an extraordinary run through “Asylum Satellite #1,” the album’s true epic.

And it’s simply impossible to quibble with the selection for the rest of the record. Highlights include the always haunting “Out of This World,” the intense 13-minute “The Invisible Man,” and perhaps my favorite Marillon song, “Afraid of Sunlight.” For years now, the band has closed concerts with the cathartic and spiritual “Neverland,” and that’s here, but this show ends with “Happiness is the Road,” a song that builds and builds on record to a too-abrupt fadeout. On stage, it morphs into a singalong, and Happiness is Cologne goes out on the sound of thousands carrying the chorus by themselves. For a band that’s more about their fans than anything else, it’s the perfect closing.

The concentration on later material means Happiness is something of a slow, ambient experience – Marillion’s been headed in a more ethereal direction for some time, and I count only four songs on this live record I would consider “rock.” Some have suggested that guitarist Steve Rothery has been muted, and if given his way, the Marillion sound would be less calm and pretty. One listen to the other new record from the Marillion camp, the second album from Rothery’s The Wishing Tree, should dispel that idea. It’s even calmer and prettier than much of Happiness.

The Wishing Tree is Rothery and singer Hannah Stobart. Their first album, Carnival of Souls, came out in 1996, and I don’t think anyone expected a second. But now, 13 years later, here is Ostara, and not much has changed. The new album has more electric guitars than the first, and the sound is a little fuller. But overall, The Wishing Tree remains the same – slow, pretty songs that showcase Stobart’s strong, clear voice.

I hear bits of Kate Bush, and parts of Iona, and even some Loreena McKennitt, but I’m not entirely certain just who The Wishing Tree reminds me of this time. “Hollow Hills” stands out as a favorite, its ethereal folk bed augmented with subtle keyboards and mandolin. But then “Seventh Sign” brings a bit of the blues to the proceedings, and some soaring lead work by Rothery. Some of the later songs are more traditional ballads, like “Fly,” but the album closes on a strong note with the achingly pretty “Soldier,” which sounds like it’s four centuries old.

One thing I’ve always admired about Rothery is his willingness to serve his songs. Most guitarists, given a solo or side project, will use it to show off how well they can play, which usually translates into wanky solos and self-indulgent shredding. Rothery is at least as good as anyone you could name, but he has nothing to prove – he concentrates on making these songs as lovely as they can be, and rarely takes a solo. When he does, he shows once again that he’s an expert at getting the most out of only a few notes. Rothery is one of the most emotional guitarists I’ve ever heard, and he plays just enough to move you to tears, and not one note more.

These two releases will certainly tide me over until the next Marillion album, rumored to be an acoustic excursion and scheduled for later this year. You’ll find both, as well as a veritable cornucopia of amazing, life-changing music, at their website.

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It’s only April, and already I have two favorite records that are ineligible for the top 10 list. The first, as I mentioned two weeks ago, is Roger Joseph Manning Jr.’s fantastic Catnip Dynamite – it came out in Japan last year, and I didn’t want to pay the import prices, so I missed out. The second is less problematic for me, but more annoying, since I like it so damn much. It’s called Slice O Life, and it’s a solo acoustic live album from Bruce Cockburn.

I saw Cockburn live once, in a little church in Portland, Maine, about 14 years ago. I was just starting to explore his extensive catalog, and what I saw that night only encouraged me more. For 40 years, Cockburn (pronounced “Coburn”) has been writing extraordinary, literate folk-rock songs about the world and how to live in it. This is his 26th release, and while it serves as a fine summary of where he’s been, it also amply shows his skills as both a guitarist and an interpreter.

Let’s start with that first one. Cockburn is an incredible guitar player, full stop. You will swear at points on this record that you hear two guitars intertwining, but it’s all Cockburn, his fingers moving at blistering speed. He’s 63 now, and you can hear that in his voice every once in a while, but his guitar playing is as dazzling as ever here. I’ve listened to him slip into the syncopated, finger-picked rhythm of “World of Wonders” three times now, and I’m still not sure how he got his hands to do that.

Cockburn has selected a wide-ranging collection of songs here, although he includes nothing from his folksier early days – the earliest song here is “Wondering Where the Lions Are,” from 1979. On the other hand, he only includes one track, “See You Tomorrow,” from his latest, Life Short Call Now. The rest is a mix of later songs and audience favorites. You get the marvelous “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” and “How I Spent My Fall Vacation,” and you also get later tunes like the edge-of-your-seat “Wait No More” and “Put It In Your Heart.” All of them have been stripped down, and yet filled up by his acoustic playing.

I hate to be cliched about this, but the highlight for me is his controversial hit, “If I Had a Rocket Launcher.” This song is such an anguished cry of pain, written after Cockburn spent time in Guatemala and watched families ripped apart by war and oppression. It’s all rage, this song, ending with the line “If I had a rocket launcher, some son of a bitch would die,” and no matter how many times I hear it, that bit gets to me. On this record, Cockburn plays an amazing solo between verses three and four, his guitar carrying the unbridled anger of the lyric. It’s a striking performance of a still-stunning song.

I don’t think this is the best album to start with if you’re new to Cockburn. But for longtime fans like me, Slice O Life is simply wonderful. Cockburn has spent a long career in the shadows, writing politically and spiritually aware music that inspires passionate loyalty from the few that get to hear it. There’s every chance that this will end up as one of my 10 favorite records of 2009, and I won’t be able to include it on the list. But that doesn’t make it any less fantastic. Seek it out.

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And now, completing the live album trifecta, here’s another installment of Stuff I Missed.

I love the Hooters. Always have. They’re another one of those bands with strong associations to my childhood. I remember first hearing “All You Zombies,” and “And We Danced,” and “Johnny B” on MTV. I wore out my cassette copy of One Way Home, particularly the first side. When Zig Zag came out, I picked it up on day one, and couldn’t stop listening. (Apparently I was the only one – it was the band’s Disappointing Follow-Up, more experimental than fans were expecting.) My friend Mike and I even used “Deliver Me” in one of our school video projects, about the Erie Canal. The opening guitar lick still makes me smile.

So I’m not sure how I missed the release of Both Sides Live, the Hooters’ two-disc concert document from last year. I did hear their solid reunion record, Time Stand Still, from 2007, and gave it a good write-up in this column. That album has not lost an ounce of its luster. It’s what a reunion album should be – in love with life and music, reveling in the sounds of old while exploring new territory.

Both Sides Live is like a victory lap. Released on their own label, the two discs document two different types of Hooters show. The first, dubbed The Electric Factory, captures a November 2007 gig at the titular club in Philadelphia. It’s a big rock show, kicking off with the first two tracks from the new album, then slamming into old favorites “South Ferry Road” and “All You Zombies.” That last one must be one of the strangest chart hits in history, telling the stories of Noah and Moses over a foreboding minor key crawl. It’s superb here.

Listening to this, I’m struck by how well the new material stands up. I’m conditioned to love even the opening notes of songs like “Satellite,” but the raging “Where the Wind May Blow” is perhaps the most convincing rocker here, and “Free Again” makes for a sweet extended closer. Still, my favorite Hooters song remains “Karla With a K,” the perfect example of what they do – it’s a jig, basically, all accordions and acoustic guitars until the electrics kick in, and it becomes a perfect synthesis of traditional folk and modern rock.

The second disc is the gem, however. Called The Secret Sessions, it finds the Hooters stripping down to their acoustic basics and recording before a small audience at their studio in Philly. The track selection is almost the same as the electric record, but the sound is remarkably different. Dig “Satellite,” here a bluesy stomp shorn of its trademark synth lines. Check out “Johnny B,” a much lighter take that almost dances atop its finger-picked foundation.

Both the electric and acoustic albums include the Hooters’ take on Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” and you may feel a twinge of hesitation at that. It’s only natural. But trust me when I say the Hooters have made this song their own, particularly on the acoustic disc. They find the sadness Henley missed. Both albums also include “Karla With a K,” and I love the acoustic take on it. The Secret Sessions concludes with “And We Danced,” and stripped of its ‘80s keyboards, it stands as a Springsteen-esque rocker, practically timeless.

But don’t take my word for it. As I said, I love this band. Always have. Your mileage may vary – log onto their site and find out for yourself. As for me, I may have missed Both Sides Live in 2008, but I’m enjoying the hell out of it in 2009.

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Next week, Bat for Lashes, Death Cab for Cutie, and Richard Swift. At least one of these will probably be in the top 10 list. Join me in seven days to find out which one I mean.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Soldiering On

Last week, I mentioned some of the first concept albums I encountered, the ones that convinced an impressionable young northeastern lad that the album-length statement is where it’s at. It’s just an accident of birth that one of them happened to be Queensryche’s 1988 opus Operation: Mindcrime. I was 14 at the time, with long hair and a love for classic metal, and Mindcrime was the smartest album I’d ever heard.

That record left an indelible impression on me. To this day, anytime someone says “I remember now,” I am compelled to respond with, “I remember how it started. I don’t remember yesterday. I just remember doing what they told me… told me… told me…” Of course, I never get all that out before the weird looks (and occasional acts of physical violence) start, but it’s almost Pavlovian. I can’t help myself.

As a consequence of my misspent youth, I’ve been conditioned to take Queensryche at face value. I understand why people think they’re ridiculous. Honest, I do. Geoff Tate’s over-the-top operatic voice, the band’s love of cheesy metal riffs and long, flailing guitar solos, and the unfailingly self-serious nature of their material – I get it. But I just don’t automatically hear it. Because of my teenage obsession with Mindcrime and Queensryche in general, my first instinct is respect. I approach each new Queensryche album blind (or deaf, as it were) to the things that turn off most other people.

In some cases, that’s a detriment. I posted a full dissection of 2007’s Operation: Mindcrime II, for instance, comparing it to the original and examining it as a work of art, without ever really conveying the truth – it’s just not very good. But in some cases, such as the new American Soldier, I think my automatic respect for Queensryche is an asset. It allows me to see past the sometimes clumsy execution to the honest, earnest intent, which in this case is surprisingly admirable.

You will laugh at this record’s conceit. I laughed, and I love Queensryche. American Soldier is a concept album told through the eyes of (you guessed it) American soldiers. Main songwriter Tate spent months interviewing real-life members of the armed forces, and veterans of several past wars. He used these interviews as source material for his lyrics, which tell tales of soldiers going off to war, fighting, and returning home. It is meant, Tate says, as a tribute to the men and women who defend our country, day in and day out.

This is Queensryche, of course, so the record has all the subtlety of a brick to the face. When I first heard that Tate would sing a duet with his 10-year-old daughter on a track called “Home Again,” him playing a soldier at war and her playing his child left behind at home, I groaned audibly. The finished track is exactly as sappy and cringe-inducing as it sounds, just one of the ham-handed, overly-literal moments that have always defined this band, like it or not.

But you know what? American Soldier is far better than it has any right to be. It’s probably the strongest record Queensryche has made since leaving their major label 10 years ago, propelled by its concept and the band’s total commitment to it. As hard as it may be for those not raised on operatic metal to take some of this seriously, it’s clear that the band took it seriously, and did everything in its power to make this album the tribute they intended it to be.

Without question, the smartest decision Tate and company made on American Soldier was to include snippets of the actual interviews with the veterans and soldiers they talked to. The second track, “Unafraid,” is almost entirely made up of these interviews, and you get the immediate sense that these are real people with real stories, and a real love of their country. A few of them are given extended spotlights here – “If I Were King” begins with a man who lost a friend on the battlefield, while “At 30,000 Ft.” starts with an infantryman’s perspective on air combat. These are very affecting moments, and some are genuinely haunting.

Tate is not a natural storyteller – his lyrics are mainly devoid of detail, and he always takes the path of least resistance when it comes to word choices. But he handles this material well. With a concept that could have led to 12 versions of Kid Rock’s putrid “Warrior,” Tate finds the searching heart, the wounded self-doubt of his subjects. “The Killer” has a pounding rock base, but its narrator refuses to just go with that energy, instead debating with the voices in his head before taking a life. “I’ve got to be the killer,” Tate sings, and his words drip with regret.

“A Dead Man’s Words” is the story of a man left behind in the desert to die, and of the rescue party that goes after him. The music mirrors the endless expanse of sand as Tate really digs into this man’s experience. He does the same with the haunted bomber pilot of “At 30,000 Ft.,” who ends the song screaming, “I’m the creator of this new promised land, and I wonder, what the hell did I make?”

“If I Were King,” “Man Down” and “Remember Me” tell stories of soldiers who made it back home, soldiers full of guilt that they survived while their comrades did not. And closing song “The Voice” explores what it’s like to die with that pain and regret still staining your soul. Despite a few false moves here and there, I am impressed at Queensryche’s sensitivity, their willingness to make an album about warriors that explores the consequences of war. The album does so without judgment, balancing a gung-ho opening salvo with a dark and painful denouement pretty gracefully.

Oh, there are missteps. The record opens with “Sliver,” three minutes of cock-rock boot camp with guest vocalist Jason Ames shouting his bone-headed rap-rock idiocy all over it. Yes, he’s meant to be a drill instructor. No, it doesn’t work, and it sets exactly the wrong tone for this album. I’ve already mentioned “Home Again” – the on-the-nose lyrics and weepy music aren’t helped at all by Emily Tate’s shaky-kid voice. It’s not her fault, she’s 10, but unless you buy into this idea from the outset, the song will make you giggle and sigh.

And the music is late-period Queensryche, far removed from the buzzsaw guitars and energetic choruses of their early stuff, including Mindcrime. These songs are all mid-tempo, crawling pieces with little variation and no hooks. It is the strength of the concept and Jason Slater’s remarkable production that make them hang together – this is closest to Promised Land from the early days in sound and scope, and it takes a few listens to hear just how much is going on in these tracks. Tate’s voice is strong throughout, despite not having much in the way of melody to work with, and the band locks into a groove more often than not.

But the music, it’s clear, is secondary here. This album is all about the stories it tells, all about the real-life soldiers it works overtime to immortalize. If you’re worried that this is a pro-war album (or even an anti-war album), don’t be. This is Queensryche, after all. This is an album about people, about what it takes to put your life on the line, and what it eventually costs you. If you think the very idea of Queensryche and the music they play is ridiculous, then this won’t do it for you. But the band has taken this responsibility seriously, and crafted this tribute to the best of their ability. American Soldier should suck out loud. That it doesn’t, and that it in fact approaches its subject matter sensitively and unflinchingly, makes this Queensryche’s best album in a long time.

* * * * *

Two Princes

Ten years ago, I called Prince a musical genius and a marketing moron.

This was back when he was using an unpronounceable symbol as his name and releasing three- and four-disc boxed sets regularly, with some of his best material shunted off onto bonus discs. The man’s always known how to attract attention, but he doesn’t make it easy to be a fan. Fortunately, his music has usually been worth the time and expense it takes to keep up with him.

Lately, though, Prince has been figuring out some interesting ways to get his new music out there. He knows, despite having released at least one album every two years since 1978, that some people still consider him an ‘80s throwback. Despite his brilliant musical chops and his continued exploration of the jazz-funk-soul intersection, his new stuff doesn’t get a fair shake. People want to hear “Purple Rain” and “Let’s Go Crazy” and “1999,” and they won’t spring for new Prince tunes, no matter how good they are.

So five years ago, he decided to give away a copy of his remarkably strong Musicology album with every concert ticket he sold. And two years ago, he bundled copies of his last album, Planet Earth, inside a major London newspaper, to build interest in a European tour. He’s been releasing albums and jam sessions through his website for years. And now, with two very cool new records hitting the streets, he’s unveiled yet another interesting marketing strategy.

First, he signed an exclusive deal with Target to sell his new albums. These deals have worked very well for every act not named Guns ‘n’ Roses, and Target is marketing this one well. Second, he bundled his two new full-length records together, along with a third album by his new protégé, Bria Valente. The trilogy comes in one compact package. And finally, he set the price for that package at $11.98. That’s 12 bucks for two hours and 20 minutes of new music.

It would be hard to quibble with such a bargain even if the music were mediocre, but it isn’t. The two new Prince albums here – the guitar-driven Lotusflow3r and the dance-funk MPLSound – find the Purple One bouncing back nicely from the mild disappointment of Planet Earth, and delivering in spades.

The main attraction is Lotusflow3r, and if you still have doubts that Prince is an amazing guitar player, these 48 minutes will dispel them decisively. He hasn’t shredded like this since Chaos and Disorder, back in 1996, and hasn’t sounded this confident in his own abilities in ages. This is guitar-pop Prince at his finest – “4Ever” could have fit nicely on the third side of Sign O the Times, “Dreamer” kicks off with a pure Jimi Hendrix lick before it explodes into a six-string extravaganza, and “Love Like Jazz” gives Prince the chance to show off his more tasteful, yet no less excellent rhythm playing.

And those aren’t even the standouts. The one that really grabs my ear is “Colonized Mind,” a slow, minor-key blues with some outstanding lead work. Prince is in fine voice throughout this record, singing about love and God and the state of the world, as always, but the sweet instrumental “77 Beverly Park” provides a nice oasis. This is like something Phil Keaggy would play on one of his acoustic albums, and it forms a nice bridge between the more rocking sections of this album – the next track, “Wall of Berlin,” crashes to life with a thunderous drumbeat.

Lotusflow3r is top-notch Prince-pop – he even makes a cover of “Crimson and Clover” work – but very little of it is danceable, strictly speaking. For that side of the man, put on MPLSound, the second full-lengther here. This one’s a party, a genuine throwback to his ‘80s sound. Here are the electronic dance beats, the pitch-modulated vocals, the funky synth bass lines – this is music that would not have been out of place on 1999. Can he still do it? For the most part, yes.

Observe “Chocolate Box,” all six minutes and 13 seconds of it. Opening with a classic Prince harmonized intro (“I got a box of chocolates that’ll rock the socks off any girl that want to come my way”), the song is basically made up of a two-note synthesizer bass wiggle and a thudding computer beat, while Prince, his voice processed, folded, spindled and mutilated, breaks out his old horny club groove. It’s been a while since we’ve heard this from him – not since his conversion to the Jehovah’s Witness faith, in fact – and it’s surprising just how well he slips back into this sound.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that MPLSound is one of the many finished records Prince has had in his vault for 10 or more years, honestly. “Dance 4 Me” is another helium-voiced ‘80s club track, and the frequent references to God that pepper it are nothing new for Prince, and not necessarily indicative of his more recent conversion. And “U’re Gonna C Me” is an old song, first surfacing on One Nite Alone, a collection of piano performances released in 2002.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. Prince does this sort of thing so well, so convincingly, that I’m just glad to have another 48 minutes of it to listen to. MPLSound closes with the upbeat stomper “No More Candy 4 U,” in which Prince shouts, “We’re too funky, you can’t handle our groove.” And after the retro electro party he’s just thrown, it’s hard to argue.

Of course, if you buy Lotusflow3r and MPLSound, you do have to bring home Elixer, the debut from Bria Valente, as well. I’ve never been a fan of Prince’s protégés, and Valente is just another in a long line. The album benefits from Prince’s production work, and the jazzy playing is sweet, but the songs aren’t remarkable, and Valente just isn’t a compelling enough singer to make them work. It’s nice enough, and maybe worth one listen, but it wouldn’t be worth buying on its own.

Interestingly, though, while Prince has been reluctant to sing his trademark dirty sex lyrics for some time, Valente has no such qualms. A song called “Here I Come” is exactly what you’d expect, and her references to being “deep enough” on “All This Love” aren’t referring to the bass line. Initially, I thought the typographers had misspelled “Elixir,” until I heard the song, and realized it’s a bad oral sex pun. It’s just funny to me that Prince won’t sing these lyrics himself any more (with the exception of his vocal turn on the title track), but he still writes these songs for someone else.

Still, I find it hard to complain that Prince has given me too much music this time. The Lotusflow3er package is some of the best music Prince has made in a while, for a very affordable price. Twelve bucks for three CDs is a bargain, especially when the Princely One’s two contributions here are as good as they are. He’s still a musical genius, but his marketing acumen has picked up nicely, and I hope he’s able to get this music into many more hands as a result. He may not be as relevant as he once was, but Prince’s music remains as superb as ever.

* * * * *

Three Yeahs, Three Albums

I may have mentioned my Third Album Theory before. Put simply, it’s my belief that a band’s third record is the one that defines them, that opens up the directions they will go in the future. Musicians have their entire lives to write their debut albums, so those are usually about where they’ve been. The second album is ordinarily a reaction to the first, and can sometimes be either a carbon copy or an extreme change of direction. But the third one, that’s the album on which a band usually finds its feet, finds its confidence, and creates its own identity.

The other two acts we looked at this week fit into that theory nicely. Prince’s third album was Dirty Mind, on which he fully established his computerized sex-funk sound, and it followed two more tepid, soulful records that didn’t sell nearly as well. And Queensryche’s third is still arguably their best, the rock opera Operation: Mindcrime.

And so it is with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the acclaimed New York trio that exploded onto the scene seven years ago. Their first album, Fever to Tell, is a barely-contained ball of energy, jerking from one yelping garage-band throwaway to another. It gets by on character, particularly that of singer Karen O., who practically redefines the concept of throwing yourself into your music. On Fever, she screeched, gasped, cooed and snarled her way through otherwise unremarkable two-chord trash-rock, but it was the comparatively subtle “Maps” that made the band’s name.

Hence, the band reined in that energy for Show Your Bones, their surprisingly pretty (and pretty solid) sophomore album. Here were acoustic guitars, synthesizers, squeaky-clean production and sweet melodies, but many complained that the tradeoff wasn’t worth it, since Karen O. was reduced to a faceless frontwoman. I didn’t really think so, and I appreciated the maturity the YYYs were trying to bring to their work, but there’s no denying Bones was a reaction to Fever. This is perfect Third Album Theory territory.

At first, it seemed like the Yeahs would be going back to their old ways on record number three. It’s called It’s Blitz, for one thing, and the cover is a closeup of Karen’s hand crushing an egg. For another, it follows the Is Is EP, a definite attempt to be more raucous while retaining the leaps in songwriting the band made with Bones. But to my surprise, the Yeahs have thrown a curveball – their third album sounds almost nothing like either of their first two. Thankfully, the new direction they’ve chosen works, and It’s Blitz is pretty damn wonderful.

First single “Zero” sets the pace. It opens with a machine-gun synth bassline and a few electronic percussion whispers, but right where the guitars should come screaming in, the band adds more keyboards, turning out a dancefloor epic. By the end, Karen O. has well and truly sunk her teeth into the soaring melody, and the effect is invigorating. The band keeps this up for the first few tracks, replacing their guitars with keyboards and their drums with computers, but you’ll notice pretty quickly that they haven’t really touched their basic alchemy. The webs of guitar they used to spin are now webs of synthesizers, but otherwise, they’re still the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

And they’ve clearly learned from Show Your Bones – Karen O. is the main attraction here. They resist turning her into Cyndi Lauper, although she comes close on some songs. “Heads Will Roll” is simply awesome, Karen shouting “Dance, dance, dance ‘till you’re dead” while the guitars and keyboards battle. “Dull Life” is the closest to a guitar-driven song here, a nice look back at their old sound – until the sprightly melody kicks in. Nothing on the first two albums sounded quite like this.

But just when you think you have It’s Blitz figured out, the Yeahs take a turn for the atmospheric. The last few songs are all beautiful and expansive, with synth beds meeting guitar landscapes straight out of Hammock. Still, amidst all this pretty din, Karen O. stands out. She nails the melody of “Hysteric,” gets her slinky on for the verses of “Dragon Queen,” and brings real heart to the confessional closer, “Little Shadow.” Her voice is perfectly imperfect, if that makes sense – she can sing, but it’s the moments when she cracks or slips off a note that give her voice its compelling humanity.

Going all synth-pop is becoming an unfortunate cliché, but the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have pulled it off remarkably well with It’s Blitz. It’s a surprising album, deeper and wider in scope than any they have made. I am not sure it fits the Third Album Theory, but it does seem to open new doors for them – there are a hundred different directions they could go from here. These 10 songs are all impressive, but what this album says about the possible future of the band is even more impressive.

* * * * *

That’s a lot of words. Next week, something shorter, featuring some Marillion, and some other things.

One last thing before I go. You may have heard that the Chicago Sun-Times filed for bankruptcy last week. The Sun-Times owns the paper I work for, and there have been some disheartening announcements about where we go from here. I expect a pay cut is in my future, in addition to some other sacrifices. As you may know, I pay for just about all the music I review on this site, and if money tightens up the way I expect it to, I may not be able to buy all the things I want to discuss here. Just warning you that there may be some lean times ahead, although I will certainly try to keep up with the big releases over the next few months.

Gonna be a rough summer, I can just tell.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well. As I mentioned last week, I participated in my first-ever podcast recently, as a guest of Derek Wright, the man behind Liner Notes Magazine.

The podcast is online now at Derek’s site. I’m listening to it right now, and I think it turned out pretty well. We talked about albums by Superdrag, Quiet Company, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Wavves (winners of a WTF Award last week), Prodigy, and one of this week’s contestants, the Decemberists.

It was a fun couple of hours, and I think that comes through, despite a few rough spots on my end. You should be listening to Derek’s bi-weekly dissection of new music anyway, but if you have a particularly burning desire to hear the author of this column rambling incoherently in search of a point while a seasoned professional tries valiantly to keep him on track, then check out the March 25 podcast. Thanks to Derek for having me on. I hope we do it again.

* * * * *

Here’s the thing about being an obsessive music fan – I’m really only limited by my budget.

There’s a lot of music vying for my attention, and me being me, I want all of it. The problem is, unless you’re one of those people who just takes what you want, music costs money, and I can only buy so much so often. Still, a disturbing amount of my twice-monthly paycheck goes to new music (and old music sometimes too, in new packages), and I’m constantly trying to prioritize my endless wish list.

There are a couple of sure-fire ways to get me to buy your record, though. One of them, oddly enough, is to put out a double album – you’d think, since they’re more expensive than singles, that twin sets would move to the bottom of my list, but I respond strongly to ambition, to career-defining, go-for-broke statements. Triple albums are even more fascinating. I don’t know why, but I’m a sucker for them.

Here’s the best way to get me on board, though: tell me a story.

As much as I love collections of songs, I love full-album statements more. The idea of telling stories through song is centuries old, but it never gets less thrilling for me. Whether you call them rock operas or concept albums or sonic theater or whatever, I can’t get enough of them. Start with an overture, give me a few reprises, set up musical themes that move the story forward when they reappear – basically, give me the sense that you’re using the album format to its fullest to say something meaningful to you, something allegorical and theatrical, something that takes an hour or two to unfold, and you’ve got me.

I’ve always liked concept records, from the first ones I heard – The Wall, Operation: Mindcrime, Tommy – but my affection for them has only intensified as they’ve become endangered. We live in the age of iTunes, where the album is almost passé, and the consumer’s vision of music is much more important than the artist’s. We’re all about the quick hit these days, the two-second idea, the catchphrase. No one has time and energy for an hour-long suite anymore. Music should entertain, or reinforce your own coolness. It shouldn’t challenge or demand more of you.

Conventional wisdom says the album is dying, and the album-length statement is dying even faster. Which is why I’m so surprised and gratified to have two superb concept albums to dig into this week – against all odds, people are still making these things, pushing the limits of their own capabilities to tell sprawling, ambitious stories. And telling them very well.

Truth be told, Colin Meloy, the visionary behind the Decemberists, has always been a storyteller. Even the earliest Decemberists records have been seeped in that centuries-old, traveling minstrel feeling, as if Meloy had popped into the recording studio after riding around the countryside on his tired old horse and singing his tales for room and board. (In a sense, that’s just what a touring band does anyway.) It should be no surprise that he’s taken that sweet major label money and just continued to tell stories.

But in nearly every way, the Decemberists’ fifth album, The Hazards of Love, is a shocker. Get this: it’s a 17-track rock opera on which every song segues, wrapping together into a single hour-long piece. It tells a tale full of illicit romance, shapeshifters, jealous queens with Oedipal issues, slaughtered children coming back from the grave, vengeance and death. In addition to Meloy, who plays three parts himself, it includes two prominent female singers taking on lead roles, and at one key point, a trio of creepy kid singers too. It is utterly, utterly mad, and yet, it’s absolutely amazing.

Start at the beginning. The Hazards of Love tells the story of Margaret, who wanders into the forest one day and finds a wounded faun. She helps him, and the faun magically transforms into a man, named William. The two fall in love, meeting secretly, and when Margaret realizes she’s pregnant, she goes into the woods to find William. But their tender reunion is interrupted by William’s adoptive mother, an angry queen who will not accept William’s new love. She works with a villainous knave to arrange Margaret’s abduction, much to William’s anguish. And then things get weird.

Can you imagine how the executives at Capitol Records reacted to this idea? They must have been beside themselves when they heard the actual record – this thing rarely sounds like the Decemberists. For one thing, it rocks, hard. It’s the loudest thing they’ve ever done, full of meaty, bluesy, explosive guitars. It’s just this side of metal in places. Combine that with the fact that almost none of these 17 songs can stand on their own musically, let alone lyrically. The tracks are parts of a whole, in every way.

Initially, that was a stumbling block for me. One by one, these are the weakest songs Colin Meloy has ever written, devoid of hooks and immediate appeal. But that’s not the point. This album is all about narrative force. It establishes key musical themes early on, and pays them off in the dark and emotional final third. “A Bower Scene,” which depicts Margaret discovering her pregnancy, is set to the same music as “The Abduction of Margaret” later on, and that same piece sets up the Queen’s whiplash-inducing blues-guitar theme, taken to its fullest extreme on “The Queen’s Rebuke.” And there are four songs entitled “The Hazards of Love,” and each uses similar melodies to set very different scenes.

The one real knockout moment, melodically speaking, is the chorus of “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” with its glorious backing vocal and yearning lyrics. And like the true craftsman he is, Meloy brings that chorus back at record’s end, offering an entirely different meaning – I shuddered the first time I heard it. The record ends with the fourth of its title tracks, subtitled “The Drowned” – you can see where this is headed, I think. The song is beautiful, perhaps the only stand-alone single here, Meloy doing his best David Gilmour over a sweet country-folk foundation, and on first listen, you might almost miss how sad and tragic it is.

Perhaps Meloy’s smartest move here was his decision to share the stage, inviting other singers to play the parts of Margaret and the Queen. Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark does a fine job with the former – her entrance on “Won’t Want for Love” is unexpected, but exactly right, and her plaintive “Oh, my one true love” near album’s end will stay with you. But it is Shara Worden, of My Brightest Diamond, who steals the show. She adds just the right over-the-top touch to the wicked Queen, and she can belt out the bluesy licks with the best of them. Her showcase is “Repaid,” which is mixed in with “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” and she’s jaw-droppingly awesome.

In one sense, Hazards is Colin Meloy opening up and taking things democratic – he shares his lead vocals, and he gives his band a much stronger role, especially multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk. Jenny Conlee’s cooler-than-cool organ playing adds a real ‘70s prog-rock feel to things, and the entire band steps up in ways they never have before. But in another way, this is the full flowering of Meloy’s singular vision – I don’t know of another songwriter who would even attempt something like this, something steeped in English folk and Jethro Tull and Broadway and dark fairy tales, all at once.

Here’s the thing. It takes tremendous faith in yourself and your audience to create and release something like this – it’s an hour-long song, essentially, and it only works if you listen to all of it, multiple times. It’s audacious, ambitious, and almost completely successful. It is also literate, challenging, difficult, and intense. I wish these were qualities embraced by the mainstream, but they’re not. Whether this daring experiment goes down in flames and takes their major-label contract with it, Meloy and his band have done themselves and their story proud here. For those of us who adore this kind of thing, The Hazards of Love is a brilliant, moving triumph, and proof that the concept album is not dead yet.

* * * * *

The Hazards of Love is an album that cannot survive without its concept. That’s not the case with the new Mastodon album, Crack the Skye, but it’s no less of a superb record in its own right.

Mastodon is one of the most acclaimed metal bands playing right now, and it’s partially because they decided early on not to be constrained by their genre. They started out like most metal bands, playing as hard and as fast as they could, but over time, they’ve developed subtlety – they’ve stayed heavy, but their work has gotten prettier, more textured. Some old-school metal fans will balk at Crack the Skye, Mastodon’s most melodic album yet, but to me, it’s their high point.

Like the Decemberists, Mastodon is no stranger to musical storytelling – this is the band, after all, that wrote an entire album based on Moby Dick. That record, 2004’s Leviathan, truly put them in the vanguard of this new metal brigade, and 2006’s astonishing Blood Mountain (no concept required, alas) only cemented their place. For album number four, they’ve come up with an absolutely bonkers framework to hang their seven new songs on. Here, I’ll let drummer Brann Dailor explain it:

“There is a paraplegic and the only way that he can go anywhere is if he astral travels. He goes out of his body, into outer space and a bit like Icarus, he goes too close to the sun, burning off the golden umbilical cord that is attached to his solar plexus. So he is in outer space and he is lost, he gets sucked into a wormhole, he ends up in the spirit realm and he talks to spirits telling them that he is not really dead. So they send him to the Russian cult, they use him in a divination and they find out his problem.

“They decide they are going to help him. They put his soul inside Rasputin’s body. Rasputin goes to usurp the czar and he is murdered. The two souls fly out of Rasputin’s body through the crack in the sky and Rasputin is the wise man that is trying to lead the child home to his body because his parents have discovered him by now and think that he is dead. Rasputin needs to get him back into his body before it’s too late. But they end up running into the Devil along the way and the Devil tries to steal their souls and bring them down…there are some obstacles along the way.”

Did you get all that? If not, don’t worry about it – Crack the Skye is immensely enjoyable without knowing any of the plot. If you need to, you can just pass off lines like “The wormhole is empty, the center of Khlysty surrounds me, the fire is dancing in a silvery sheet of breath” as fantasy-metal nonsense. And honestly, I’m not sure it isn’t. I know the story Crack the Skye purports to tell, but the lyrics are choppy and vague, the songs disconnected – the centerpiece, “The Czar,” seems only tangentially related to the rest, unless you know already how it’s supposed to connect. As a story, it fails.

But you know what? This is going to sound hypocritical, given the praise I lavished on Colin Meloy’s theatrical ambitions, but I don’t really care about the story Mastodon is trying to tell. This album is simply awesome, with or without it. It’s made up of five short songs and two epics, and every song is richly drawn and captivating. Skye was produced by Brendan O’Brien, and he’s guided the band into making one of the most sonically detailed metal albums I’ve ever heard. It may be the genre’s first headphone album.

Never fear, though – even amidst all the undeniably pretty melodies, synth textures and banjo cameos, Mastodon never lets you forget they’re a metal band. I mentioned “The Czar” before, and it’s a perfect example – over its 11 minutes, it moves from ethereal beauty to shredding madness and back. It’s simply epic, a great piece of music. That’s not to slight the shorter pieces, which cram just as much melody and power into five minutes – “Divinations” is particularly excellent.

But the real gem of the album is the final track, “The Last Baron.” It is a 13-minute crescendo, beginning with chiming, bell-like guitars and growing, building, unfolding like origami into an absolutely crushing monster. When you hit the full explosion around the 8:30 mark, Mastodon just becomes unstoppable. And yet, with all the pyrotechnic force on display, the sonic diversity remains – there are harmonies, there is orchestration, there are little flourishes and big moments. It’s an absolutely spellbinding listen.

Crack the Skye may not be a rock opera in the truest sense, and the band has certainly not emphasized the overarching story when talking about it. But it works as a whole piece anyway, each track building off the last on the way to “The Last Baron.” Mastodon has once again claimed their place atop the new metal heap, and if they can keep moving forward the way they have on Skye, they’re likely to be there for a long time.

* * * * *

And now, it’s time for the First Quarter Report.

If you’re new to this column, here’s what the quarterly reports are all about. Like every other music critic in the world, I keep a running top 10 list throughout the year, and unveil it in late December. But I decided a couple of years ago to give you a glimpse of how that list grows and changes, as new records come out and replace older ones. Every three months, I will give you a look at my running list, frozen in time – essentially, if I had to put my top 10 list out now, here’s what it would look like:

10. Fiction Family.
9. Kid, You’ll Move Mountains, Loomings.
8. Neko Case, Middle Cyclone.
7. Steven Wilson, Insurgentes.
6. Franz Ferdinand, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand.
5. Loney, Dear, Dear John.
4. Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavilion.
3. Duncan Sheik, Whisper House.
2. Quiet Company, Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon.
1. The Decemberists, The Hazards of Love.

That’s right, I like the Decemberists album enough to put it atop my list, for now. I might tire of it in a few weeks, or a few months, but right now, I’m into it like nothing else I’ve bought this year. (Except maybe for Roger Manning’s Catnip Dynamite, but since that came out last year in Japan, it’s ineligible.) If forced at gunpoint to set the list in stone right now, The Hazards of Love would be the best album of 2009. But of course, there’s nine months left. Stick around and find out what happens next.

In seven days, some Prince, some Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and something else, probably.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Most music just floats right by me without making any impact. Some music makes me sit up and take notice, and a very small percentage of that is good enough to make me more in love with life.

But some… Some music just leaves me bewildered, scratching my head and wondering just what its authors were thinking. This isn’t a bad thing – I hear a lot of music, and nearly all of it fits neatly into categories and formulas, so the songs and records that step outside those boundaries and do something truly different are rare thrills.

I have to confess, though – the bewildering records are much more difficult to assess. Part of my process includes trying to figure out just what an artist was aiming for, and then determining for myself just how close I think they came. If the intention remains elusive, it’s much harder, and the review becomes much more about whether or not I like what’s going on. If I can’t figure out why you’ve fused death metal, polka and Tuvan throat singing, all I can do is say whether I like your polka-metal-throat-singing thing, and admit my confusion.

I’m sure this peek behind the curtain is interesting to no one but me, but it leads into this week’s main event, which I’ve called The WTF Awards. (As in, “What the fuck?!?”) This is all about music that makes you go “hmm,” musical ideas that, on the face of them, make no sense. I expect to get a couple of them every year. I’ve bought three in the last two weeks.

Let me just say up front that the gold standard, the WTF Lifetime Achievement Award, is Texas musician Jandek. Nothing here is as baffling (or as interesting, frankly) as his 30-plus-year career as the most outside of outsider musicians, and I promise I will do a whole column on him someday. The three contestants this week just get plain old vanilla WTF Awards, and as you may expect, once I wrapped my brain around them, I ended up liking some more than others.

Without further ado, the first ever WTF Awards.

* * * * *

The ‘90s alternative explosion was the soundtrack to my college years. Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, even shameless copycats like Stone Temple Pilots – I can’t hear those songs without thinking about my years as a student. But at the top of the heap for me was Soundgarden.

They were among the originals – their first major-label album, Louder than Love, came out in 1989, two years before Nirvana’s Nevermind opened the floodgates. None of the Seattle bands mixed melody and flat-out superb musicianship the way Soundgarden did. Just listen to “Rusty Cage,” one of the singles from 1991’s Batmotorfinger: the multiple choruses are as much of a surprise as the explosive riffing in the verses. Technical, difficult, heavy-as-hell music that just plain rocked – that was Soundgarden, and they remained consistent through two more terrific albums before imploding in 1997.

Since then, frontman Chris Cornell has seemed directionless, which is a shame. He has one of the most versatile, compelling voices in rock, but he wasted years fronting Audioslave, trying to fit that melody-rich voice into the mindless pounding of Rage Against the Machine’s rhythm section. Cornell’s solo debut, Euphoria Morning, was a sweet, low-key affair, but the less said about his second, Carry On, and especially his godawful cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” the better. Oh, and he wrote a crappy song for a crappy James Bond movie too.

And now, there is this. Cornell’s third solo album is called Scream, and it’s… I don’t even know.

We can start with the basic facts. Cornell plays not a single note on this record. Scream was produced by Timbaland – yes, that Timbaland – and the music on it inhabits this strange middle ground between dance-pop and electro-rock. Programmed beats thump away while string samples fill in the corners, buzzing synth bass lines percolate under studio-sweetened choruses just drowned in backing vocals. And on top of all this, there’s Cornell and his rock-god voice.

You’d think it would be an odder fit, but here’s the thing – Scream is much more baffling on paper than it is coming out of your speakers. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still weird to hear the guy who shouted “Big Dumb Sex” and “Spoonman” crooning over funky dancefloor beats, and when the album turns more towards the rump-shakers, it stumbles. But you’ll be surprised how well this combination works.

It took me several confused listens to figure out why. Most of the negative reviews (and there have been a lot of them) focus on which personality should be dominant here – some complain it’s not rock enough (or at all), and some complain it’s not danceable R&B, the kind that has become Timbaland’s stock-in-trade. The secret they seem to be missing is that Scream represents an equal partnership. Both Cornell and Timbaland made a genuine effort to come to a middle ground, and purists on either side won’t like the results, but I have to give them credit.

Does it work? Sometimes. Opener “Part of Me” might be the most uncomfortable, with its opening synth fanfare, Justin Timberlake-ready beat and bass line, and a chorus that finds Cornell repeating the line “That bitch ain’t a part of me.” The song is about rubbing up against a girl in a club, and then explaining yourself to your lady – prime material for most of Timbaland’s clients, but sort of embarrassing for a 44-year-old rocker from Seattle.

Thankfully, it gets better, and pretty quickly. “Time,” “Sweet Revenge,” “Get Up” and “Ground Zero” all swagger pretty convincingly, and the segues between each song keep the momentum going, turning Scream into an hour-long suite of sorts. The best part of this album is the return of Cornell’s melodic gift. Slow burners like “Long Gone” and “Never Far Away” stand out the most – these are Chris Cornell songs, underneath it all.

Without a doubt, this is the most interesting record Cornell has made since Soundgarden broke up. You’ll listen through to the whole thing – it’s never boring, and Timbaland is constantly throwing new things at you. But will you like it? The meet-in-the-middle approach here has served to alienate fans of both Cornell and Timbaland, despite the fact that this isn’t a throwaway project for either one. It’s clear that some serious work went into making this album sound exactly like this.

And I’ve kind of been feeling protective of it lately, like it’s an ugly, handicapped baby or something. I feel like wrapping it up in my arms and telling everyone to stop being mean, to leave it alone. “It’s not the baby’s fault it’s ugly, and has club feet! It’s trying!” The simple fact is that Scream is an experiment, one that sometimes fails. But you can’t fault Cornell and Timbaland for their commitment to it, and the more I listen, the more I think they’re on to something.

* * * * *

Sometime this week, I’m going to participate in my first podcast. I feel so hip, so not old at all.

My friend in music, Derek Wright, has asked me to join him for his seventh Liner Notes podcast, and I’m a little nervous. I enjoy listening to Derek’s opinions, and I’m not sure what I’m going to be able to add. Nevertheless, I’ve been given homework – Derek discusses a wide variety of music, much of it relatively obscure, and he sent me a list of records I need to hear before we sit down and talk about them.

And that, dear reader, is how I heard Wavves. Believe me, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have come near this for all the money in the world. I understand the irony in reviewing something to say that no one should be reviewing it, but this record is so bad, and on so many critics’ good lists, that I feel the need to say something.

Wavves is Nathan Williams, a one-man noise factory from San Diego. His music is shit. I don’t want to spend too long discussing it, because it’s not worth much space. Somehow, this guy convinced a fairly well-known indie label, Fat Possum, to release his stuff – his second album, Wavvves (note that third “v”), comes six months after his first. And what baffles me as much as this terrible music is the fawning acclaim it’s been getting. Wavves has become one of those indie-cool buzz bands, and I can’t figure out why.

We can start with what’s actually on the CD, because I get the feeling that the music has little to do with the acclaim.

Now, listen, you all know I love studio production. I’m a Brian Wilson fan, I love the Beatles, Roger Manning makes me jump for joy. But I also like the raw stuff, the recorded-in-a-basement type of thing, as long as the songs are good. It takes a lot for thin production to turn me off. So I say this as someone who owns every Misfits album, including that live record with the tape squeal running all the way through it. I say this as someone who owns and enjoys PJ Harvey’s 4-Track Demos, and early June Panic, and all kinds of cheaply-made efforts by local bands.

Wavvves is one of the shittiest-sounding things I’ve ever heard.

No, honestly. It’s actively annoying. Not only does it sound like it was recorded with a 50-year-old tape deck and all levels pushed into the red, but the mixing is ridiculously bad. Backing vocals are louder than lead vocals, drums are buried, and everything is covered in a fuzzy layer of ear-splitting distortion. This isn’t a matter of the music being too loud for my aging ears, it’s honestly just horribly made. It’s either the most amateur thing you’ve ever heard, or it’s purposely crafted to sound like dogshit.

So grading this thing is a matter of listening through the muck to find the songs. And it turns out, it’s not worth the effort. Track two, “Beach Demon,” has a nice riff. Everything else is either boring or boneheaded, repetitive or random. “Sun Opens My Eyes” is two notes repeated while Williams moans over them, except for the “guitar solo,” placed in quotes because it honestly sounds like something a six-year-old fumbling around on a guitar for the first time might play. Five of these songs have the word “goth” in the title, and I almost wish I could make out the lyrics so I could tell you why.

Wavvves is absolutely terrible, a chore to listen to even at 36 minutes. Every single unsigned musician I know is better at making actual music than this guy. And yet, the Onion A.V. Club gave it an A. Pitchfork placed this in its “Best New Music” section. ABC News did a piece on it. People are talking about Nathan Williams as if he were some kind of… musician or something.

Actually, that’s not true. One of the selling points I’ve seen in multiple reviews is that Williams is not a musician. This is usually written as if it were something refreshing, a breath of fresh air. Who wants to listen to those elitist musicians, acting like they’re all better than people who can’t sing, play or write songs? Honestly, lack of skill is becoming something to be proud of now, a banner to fly high. It’s more genuine, more real somehow, I guess.

All I can figure is that Wavves somehow represents this new indie-cool philosophy. It’s obscure, it is objectively terrible, and by praising it to the skies you’ll drive those “mainstream critics,” the ones who want to hear “songs” and “melodies” and “actual talent,” insane. It’s all about how cool you can look, how ahead of the wave you can be as a reviewer.

The bottom line is this. One of two things is happening here – either Nathan Williams is a terrible musician with a good publicist, or he is actually a good musician making himself sound terrible on purpose for some kind of critical credibility. Either way, why the hell would I listen to this? Wavves gets the WTF Award in the worst possible way. It is beyond my understanding why it was made, why it was released, and why anyone is talking about it.

* * * * *

Like any good music fan, a big chunk of the V section of my CD collection is taken up by various artists compilations.

I love these things, even though, quality-wise, they’re often a mixed bag. I’m often impressed with the themes the producers (I guess they’re called curators now, for this kind of thing, but that’s just too pretentious for me) come up with to tie the hodgepodge of tracks together. F’rinstance, War Child’s latest benefit collection is called Heroes, and features veteran artists (Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Brian Wilson) picking younger ones (The Hold Steady, The Like, Rufus Wainwright) to cover their songs. That’s just neat.

But every once in a while, I’ll get one of these that just… makes… no… sense. That’s the case with the awkwardly-titled Covered, a Revolution in Sound: Warner Bros. Records. The concept is fine – this is current Warner Bros. artists covering songs from the label’s vast catalog. But if these 12 songs are supposed to hang together in any other way, well, they don’t.

Still, I’ve got to say, this disc is thrilling. Various artists collections like this allow bands to really stretch out, pulling off things they’d never even attempt on their own records. The opening track here, for example, is ZZ Top’s “Just Got Paid,” as covered by Mastodon. That’s right, Mastodon, the terrifying metal band responsible for Leviathan and Blood Mountain, two of the most punishing and progressive heavy albums of the past decade. That band, doing ZZ Top. All southern-boogie style. With Billy Gibbons sitting in. It’s pretty great.

The songs on Covered are grouped into informal sections – it starts with the blues rockers, including the Black Keys’ stomping take on Captain Beefheart’s “Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles,” but shortly segues into the acoustic folk numbers. Many of these are about what you’d expect – Michelle Branch does a capable job with Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” while James Otto pulls off a note-for-note rendition of Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.”

The curve balls are Against Me’s take on “Here Comes a Regular,” one of the most emotional Replacements songs – they do it just like Westerberg did, with one acoustic guitar and vocal – and Adam Sandler (!) doing a very good Neil Young impression on “Like a Hurricane.” Sandler plays this absolutely straight, and also chokes out some mean lead guitar, Crazy Horse style. Why would Sandler do this? Is this the start of a serious music career, or just a weird one-off? I don’t get it, but I like it.

The angsty bands are next, and the absolute best of them is electro-metal outfit The Used, who slash their way through the Talking Heads classic “Burning Down the House.” Also awesome is Disturbed’s take on Faith No More’s “Midlife Crisis’ – though not quite as great as Disturbed’s explosive version of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” from a few years ago, it’s quite good, and reminds me what a terrific band Faith No More was.

But it’s the last track that seals this record’s place in this column. Get this: The Flaming Lips, doing Madonna’s “Borderline,” with the help of nephew Dennis Coyne’s band, Stardeath and White Dwarfs. Honest to God, they do “Borderline.” They turn it into a six-minute spacerock dirge, but somehow, they preserve every single element of the original. It’s brilliant, it’s silly, it’s out of nowhere, and I have no idea how the hell it came to be. I listen to this, and all I can do is shake my head in bewildered admiration.

If the intention here was to create a disjointed, crazy, utterly confusing mix tape, well, they did it. I don’t know what to make of Covered as a whole, and though it is uncommonly successful track by track, it makes no sense as a collection. And then there is “Borderline,” which turns the rest of the record inside out – it’s impossibly good, and utterly perplexing. Perhaps there is no rhyme, no reason, no meaning. Either way, this one gets a WTF Award just for existing.

* * * * *

I was planning on including the Decemberists’ new mad-as-hatters rock opera The Hazards of Love in this week’s piece, but I think it will work better next week, paired with the new Mastodon. The theme, of course, will be bugfuck insane concept albums. Come back in seven days for that.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So this is going to sound very strange, especially since it has nothing to do with music or anything else this column usually tackles. It’s just something that’s been tickling my mind lately.

Okay. Have you seen those new Cheetos commercials? The ones with a depressingly computer-generated Chester Cheetah? The usual conceit of these ads is that our non-Cheetah protagonist, easily identified because he or she is eating Cheetos, encounters someone rude or obnoxious. He or she then uses his or her Cheetos to exact some form of petty revenge – wiping orange residue on the obnoxious person’s back, for example, or throwing the tasty snacks on the ground by the obnoxious person’s feet, to attract birds.

And each time, Chester Cheetah looks on approvingly. In some of the ads, he actually gives our protagonist the idea for whatever Cheetos-related vengeance they enact. In one, he says “Papa Chester’s proud of you,” in a really creepy, low voice.

This troubles me. Not a lot, you understand, but it does rub me wrong. I just think Chester Cheetah deserves better. When I was growing up, Chester was unflappable. You couldn’t rattle that guy. He’d breeze through Cheetos ads with his cool-as-hell shades, sometimes dancing but often just hanging out, totally laid back. He rolled with the punches and kept on smiling, just being… cool.

And now? This Chester is a bit of a scumbag. Rather than just letting the irritations of life roll off his back, he encourages striking out at people, and revels in their misery. Who is this guy? What happened to Chester? Did he have a bad experience with a woman cheetah that hardened him towards life? He’s no longer cool. He’s just kind of a dick who thinks he’s cool.

Yes, I’ve actually spent time thinking about this. Shut up. Stop laughing. Move along, nothing to see here…

* * * * *

Tori Amos’ new album is called Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

I would repeat that for effect, but I don’t want to type it again. It is easily the dumbest, most on-the-nose title of her career, even if it is from Guys and Dolls. The album, out on May 19, is another 17-song monster, and the cover art is bland and boring. Every Tori album fills me with dread these days, but I fear even the modest gains she made with American Doll Posse (an album that has diminished somewhat with time) may be lost here.

Depressing. We shall see.

* * * * *

I’m finding myself interested in parts and their sums this week. I’ve been a fan of Canadian supergroup The New Pornographers since their first album, Mass Romantic, in 2000. I came awfully close to including their third album, Twin Cinema, on my 2005 top 10 list. They’re less a band and more a collective, a group of songwriters and prolific artists in their own right who come together once every couple of years to pool talents.

And what they do works brilliantly. But me being me, I’m practically obsessed with taking things apart and putting them back together. It’s not enough for me to just enjoy the sound, however it comes together. I need to know which of the component parts is responsible for what, and why the combination works as well as it does. I know, I frustrate myself, too.

But the Pornographers make it easy for me by maintaining their own careers, apart from the band. This makes it easy to figure out just what each one brings to the table, and what compromises each one makes in service of the collective sound. Happily, each of the Pornographers’ solo records is also worth hearing – it’s not just an academic exercise, but an enjoyable romp through different kinds of musical imagination.

No disrespect to Dan Bejar intended, but the two New Pornographers who get the most attention are Carl Newman and Neko Case. They’re the Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks of this group, although I’m pretty sure they never dated, broke up and wrote a whole album of songs about each other. Newman writes most of the band’s tunes, often for Case to sing – he’s the boy genius, the guy with a thousand good ideas a minute. Case grounds his work with her glorious voice. She adds an air of authenticity to everything she sings, and can sell Newman’s melodies better than anyone.

They work so well together that it’s sometimes strange to hear them acting independently. Case’s solo work is often country-inflected, usually earthy and genuine-sounding. She doesn’t quite have the scope as a songwriter that Newman does, but with her voice, it rarely matters. Newman, on the other hand, is a melody factory. His songs are endlessly inventive and quirky, if not always memorable. His voice is nice, but words like “capable” and “adequate” come to mind. He has a songwriter’s voice, not a singer’s.

But both of their recent efforts are quite strong – both, in fact, are better than the last New Porn album, 2007’s Challengers. Why is this? Did the synergy simply fail during the Challengers sessions? Did Case and Newman save their best stuff for their own albums? You’d think that would be the first assumption, but the songs on both of these albums play to their authors’ individual strengths more than to the New Pornographers group dynamic. Put simply, these aren’t really New Pornographers songs.

That’s especially true of Case’s record. It’s her fifth, and it’s called Middle Cyclone. I have to make special mention here of the cover, as it’s my favorite of 2009 so far. It features Case in a short black skirt, crouched on the front of a classic old car, and clutching a sword in her right hand. She looks ready to strike, or at least ready for an adventure. It’s a pretty awesome picture. But if it leads you to expect something bold and raucous, like the soundtrack to a Quentin Tarantino flick, prepare to be disappointed.

Middle Cyclone is a slow, pretty affair, for the most part. Case’s country leanings are all but gone here, replaced by acoustic balladry and jangle-pop. But it’s pretty good acoustic balladry and jangle-pop, and Case brings That Voice, which elevates everything. Opener “This Tornado Loves You” is her most clever, a lovesick letter from a force of nature that has chased the object of its affection across the country: “Carved your name across three counties,” she sings, and ends the song pleading, “This tornado loves you, what will make you believe me?”

The overall tone is sweet and down-to-earth, with some real flashes of invention. “Polar Nettles” does some interesting things with backwards recording, which the title song contains two music box solos that fit in with Case’s melodies perfectly. My favorite song here is “Prison Girls” – this one does sound like a Tarantino flick, with its minor-key surf guitar and dark lyrics. (Oh, and the best “oh-oooh” refrain Case has ever written.) She also does a great job with Harry Nilsson’s “Don’t Forget Me,” a song also recently covered by the Walkmen.

Still and all, Case’s songs are pretty simple, even if they are simply pretty. Middle Cyclone sounds great when you’re playing it, but leaves your head pretty soon after it stops, no matter how haunting and moving her voice is. Strangely, she ends her album with 31 minutes of frog and insect noises, as if to underline the nature themes that sprinkle her songs this time. I’m not sure what to make of that, but the other 14 tracks are decent-to-good tunes that never reach for more.

Meanwhile, Carl Newman (who goes by A.C. Newman when recording on his own) has stepped up his songwriting game on his second solo disc, Get Guilty. He keeps the more mellow approach of Challengers, but remembers to bring engaging hooks this time, and his record is all the better for it. Opener “There Are Maybe Ten or Twelve” sounds like a fanfare, and says a lot with a few well-placed lines and observations. The third verse begins like this: “And her eyes, they were a color I can’t remember, which says more than the first two verses…”

Newman does his budget Brian Wilson production here as well, with trumpets, trombones, saxophones, recorders, flutes, mandolins, strings and an army of backing vocalists. (The recorder is on second track “The Heartbreak Rides,” and its entrance is unexpected, but sounds just right.) While I like all these songs, Newman shines in the record’s final third. “Young Atlantis” may be his best song this time out, a circular folk number with a great chorus and some swell strings. It’s matched by the bizarre “The Collected Works,” and Newman ends the record with the singalong “All of My Days and All of My Days Off.”

But here’s the thing – Newman on his own is a songwriter’s songwriter, assembling chords and riffs and orchestrations like a master, but failing to emotionally connect. It’s a flaw I’m not sure I would have even noticed if he hadn’t spent so much of the past nine years working with Case, who bridges that gap effortlessly. It’s easy to see from these records what Newman and Case bring back to their band – he’s the brain, she’s the heart. They’re good on their own, but when they really click together, they’re something more.

Would I recommend these solo albums, then? Sure. Case’s record is frequently beautiful, and quite frankly, I’d pay money to hear her sing just about anything. And Newman’s disc is an indie pop masterclass, like just about everything he does. If you want to hear 12 songs packed with little surprises and big hooks, you can’t go wrong. As much as I like the whole better than the parts, I’m glad I don’t have to choose. I can have both, and so can you.

* * * * *

One thing to mention before I go. Did everyone see Jon Stewart’s epic takedown of CNBC’s Jim Cramer last week? It was one of the most impressive pieces of actual journalism I’ve seen in a long time. That it came from a guy who hosts a fake news show on Comedy Central surprised some, but not me. Stewart is one of the most important voices of our time, especially when he’s good and angry and has a boatload of research to back him up.

The unedited interview is in three parts on Comedy Central’s Web site here, here and here. Do check it out.

Next week, a little thing I’m calling “The WTF Awards.” Come back in seven days to find out WTF that means.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

This is the first of two columns this week. The other, which you can get to via the archive, is my long ramble about the Watchmen movie. To sum up: it could have been a lot better, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I’m a pretty happy geek right now.

This one, however, is about music. We’re mere weeks away from a flood of new tunes that won’t let up until summer’s over, at least – I’d have to write two columns every week to keep up with everything. (I won’t, of course, so I’m bound to miss some things.) Expect to see reviews of new records by the Decemberists, Ace Enders, Indigo Girls, Mastodon, The Wishing Tree, Prince, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Queensryche (how can I not review this craptasterpiece?), Ben Folds, Pet Shop Boys, Jars of Clay, Tinted Windows, Great Northern, Conor Oberst and Green Day. Anything else I get to is gravy.

Whew! Onward!

* * * * *

I’ve been living with the new U2 album, No Line on the Horizon, for a few weeks now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that my copy is defective.

I’d like to borrow David Fricke’s copy – his seems to be in perfect working order, judging by his five-star review in Rolling Stone. Mine, however, remains a confusing, difficult listen, no matter how many times I plow through it. I’ve been waiting for this album to click, to finally reveal itself to me, but after weeks of listening, first to a downloaded copy and then to the real thing, I’m afraid it just isn’t going to happen.

I’ve never had such a complex reaction to a U2 album before. Ordinarily, my first impression remains my enduring one – The Unforgettable Fire was a favorite early on, and has remained one, while Zooropa rubbed me wrong the first time, and never grew on me. The only exception has been Achtung Baby, which struck me as an odd, off-kilter little record my first time through, and soon blossomed, taking its place in the pantheon pretty quickly. I’m hoping the same will happen with No Line on the Horizon, though I doubt it.

The thing is, I’m an old-school U2 fan. Critics have turned on their last two albums, 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, for being U2 by the numbers. I completely disagree. I think they signified a return of creative fire after a decade in the wilderness. I’m especially fond of Atomic Bomb because of its focus – it’s four guys in a room, playing their hearts out. The songs are loud and massive, and they have that reach-for-the-sky U2 flavor, but they’re much more down-to-earth and gritty than anything since the early days.

A band this restless isn’t going to stay in one comfortable place for very long, though. No Line on the Horizon is the inevitable transitional album, Bono and the lads indulging their experimental streak again. I’ve always admired U2’s willingness to follow those impulses, even if they lead straight off a cliff. But I’ve never particularly liked listening to the end products. Zooropa and Pop, perhaps the most experimental records they’ve made, occupy the bottom two slots in my U2 hierarchy.

So already I was bracing myself for No Line, an album crafted over several sessions, with numerous producers. In the end, they whittled down the dream team to alumni Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Steve Lillywhite, with a little help from Will-I-Am. But the finished album sounds like what it is – a confused hodgepodge of differing tones and intentions. It’s a baffling listen the first time through, and many of the head-scratching moments don’t coalesce on repeated listens.

Take “Magnificent,” a song I really wish I could like more than I do. U2 has built a career out of making the most of one riff, and they do it again here – “Magnificent” is constructed entirely on one pretty awesome guitar lick. But this song should be a joyous explosion, and it’s oddly muted. It’s produced within an inch of its life, with string sections and keyboards jockeying for room. Every time Larry Mullen goes into one of those endless snare drum fills, the song’s momentum stops dead. This will probably be great live, but it’s far too subdued here.

Speaking of momentum-killers, there’s “Moment of Surrender,” a seven-minute faux-gospel drone that drags the album down at track three. It’s not much of a song, but I expect the idea was to create cavernous space for Bono to fill. The Edge takes one of his few guitar breaks around the six-minute mark, but it’s so reserved it’s like it barely happens. The electronic drum beat never changes, the song never builds, it just goes on and on.

But I can see what they were going for, even if they fell short. With “Unknown Caller,” the six-minute meander that follows, I can’t even figure out what they wanted it to be. You get chiming guitars, you get keyboards, you get gang vocals urging you to “force quit and move to trash,” and the whole thing goes absolutely nowhere. Similarly, “Fez-Being Born” is like a dial tone. It drones on for five minutes without actually doing a damn thing.

It’s not all bad news. I can think of few things that scare me more than a U2 song with a title like “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight,” but it’s actually not that bad. At least it has a good chorus, and holds together as a sweet little ditty. “Get On Your Boots” is a mess, but its follow-up, “Stand Up Comedy,” really works, even after a dozen listens. It’s no coincidence that it’s one of the few songs here that sounds like it was jammed out live, and it has Bono’s best line this time out: “Josephine, be careful of small men with big ideas.”

Speaking of Bono, I am convinced the rest of the band needs to corner him, rip his first draft lyrics out of his hands and throw them on the fire. Even though I’m not fond of the results, it’s clear the music on this album was labored over. The lyrics, on the other hand, sound like they were scrawled onto bar napkins ten minutes before Eno hit the record button. The record kicks off with its title track, a mid-tempo tunnel of sound – you won’t be able to tell what noises were made with guitars, basses and synths, but Mullen’s powerhouse drumming holds the whole thing together. But what does Bono sing on top of this? Here are the honest-to-God opening lyrics:

“I know a girl who’s like the sea, I watch her changing every day for me, oh yeah/One day she’s still, the next she swells, you can hear the universe in her sea shells…”

Seriously. You can hear the universe in her sea shells. It gets worse. “Moment of Surrender” is about having a religious epiphany while using the ATM (or “ATM machine,” as Bono redundantly puts it). The narrator of “Unknown Caller” wants you to “cease to speak, so that I may speak, shush now” and “restart and reboot yourself.” All of “Get On Your Boots” is embarrassing. He hits the mark a few times, particularly on the superior second half – “White as Snow,” despite borrowing its melody from “O Come, O Come Emanuel,” is a haunting tale of a wounded soldier in Afghanistan. But mainly, the lyric man blows it.

The best song on the album is buried at track 10. “Breathe” is reminiscent of “Trip Through Your Wires,” but rowdier and funnier: “Coming from a long line of traveling salesmen on my mother’s side, I wasn’t just going to buy anyone’s cockatoo,” Bono smirks at one point. But this song moves – it has a terrific melody, and carries it along for its full five minutes. Yeah, there’s an unnecessary string section, but this is the one song here that pulses with life. “Cedars of Lebanon” closes the proceedings on a hushed, almost sinister note, and I’ve grown to quite like this one, too. “Choose your enemies carefully ‘cause they will define you,” Bono sing-speaks, and as the music melts away, he closes with, “They’re gonna last with you longer than your friends.”

But despite brief flashes, No Line on the Horizon is less than the sum of its parts. About half of it still leaves me baffled, even after more than a dozen spins, and the other half doesn’t hold a candle to the best songs from the last two records. Worst of all, that creative fire so prevalent on those last two albums is in short supply on this one. This is a band in dire need of some scaling back. I would like to hear what they come up with given only three months, a live room and a bunch of microphones. No Line on the Horizon is overcooked, yet lukewarm, a confusing collection of sounds that never takes flight. Like its title, it makes less sense the more you consider it.

* * * * *

And now for something completely better.

Three years ago, Austin songwriter Taylor Muse appeared out of nowhere, releasing a hell of a debut album, Shine Honesty, under the name Quiet Company. I don’t regularly listen to a lot of the records I bought in 2006, but Shine Honesty still gets a lot of spins to this day. The reason is Muse’s songs – they are dynamic and bold and melodic, and they reveal more little pleasures each time you hear them. The album was like a sustained fanfare, announcing the arrival of a major talent.

I wanted more right away, but it took three years for Muse and his collaborators to put together Quiet Company’s second album, graced with the glorious title Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon. In those three years, Muse has left Northern Records and struck out on his own – the new QuietCo album is a self-released affair. Which means it will probably reach fewer people than even the debut album did, unless word gets around. Well, I’m about to do my part, because this album is excellent – it’s not as immediate as Shine Honesty, but with repeated listens, it reveals itself as a gem, better in many respects than the band’s terrific first effort. Put simply, you should buy this, and you should buy it now.

On Shine Honesty, Muse overdubbed himself again and again, achieving these dramatic epics that belied his budget. On Everyone You Love, he’s gone even bigger. The sound is somehow more homespun and ragged, but the songs are more confident, more layered. It’s a more complete album, a fuller experience. New band member Thomas Blank, who plays guitars, pianos, organs and other things, helps flesh these tunes out, and there are a host of guests this time. It sounds more like a band effort than the one-man show Muse gave us last time.

What hasn’t changed, however, is the songwriting. Taylor Muse remains a singular talent – there are 15 songs on this thing, and every single one packs a melodic punch. Even the most typical of these tunes, the Wilco-esque “Golden (Like the State),” goes places you won’t expect, and when Muse really builds up a head of steam, his songs unfold and flower and evolve, rarely ending up where they began. “Seal My Fate” begins with four chords on a loping acoustic guitar, but check out where it goes – the delightful sunshine pop chorus is fantastic.

Highlights? Okay. The deliriously-titled “It’s Better to Spend Money Like There’s No Tomorrow Than Spend Tonight Like There’s No Money” gallops to life with an electric piano figure and a quick-quick drumbeat, and its energy never flags: “You better stop and smell the roses, you better love the life you live,” Muse sings, and the joyous music backs him up perfectly. “Our Sun is Always Rising” is one of my favorites. It begins with a simple piano sketch, guitars and drums crashing in out of nowhere and disappearing just as quickly. But it evolves into an epic pop wonderland worthy of the Polyphonic Spree.

“Red and Gold” is the album’s most beautiful moment, Muse stepping into Fleet Foxes territory for a few minutes. A fragile acoustic guitar, some sweet harmonies, and a great little melody – what else do you need? Oh, right, thoughtful lyrics, which Muse also provides in spades: “Take your time discussing all your needs, because every road will end up at the sea,” he sings.

Some of these songs are straight diary entry, some (like the sweet “Congratulations Seth and Kara”) are letters to specific people. But every one of these lyrics is considered and well-written – Bono should take notes. Muse wrestles with God, just like Bono does, but Muse’s struggles somehow seem more real, less concerned with an audience. He argues scriptures with his brother in “Seth and Kara,” and in “The Beginning of Everything at the End of the World,” he declares that modern religion “leaves me feeling cold, leaves me feeling faithless, because our scars both old and new, they never seem to shame us.”

And just like last time, Muse really pulls out the stops at record’s end. He’s already asked you to listen to 45 minutes of relatively complex pop by the time you get to “How to Fake Like You are Nice and Caring,” a seven-minute excursion into awesome, but you won’t mind. The title is a reference to Magnolia, and the song is a doubt-filled excoriation of this greedy world. Once it gets going, it’s like a roller coaster, zipping through different movements and melodies with graceful ease.

He gets no less epic with “On Modern Men,” another one that starts slow and builds relentlessly, Sufjan Stevens style, into a wall of sound. “They want you to take a bow, everybody here’s allowed one, so make it good, son,” Muse sings, effectively bringing the album to a close. Sweet coda “Congratulations April and Lucas” is like a parting gift: “I’m gonna count my blessings, I’m gonna count my sacred things…” Despite the noisy denouement, it’s a low-key, optimistic finish to an album that has laid bare its author’s soul, and by the end, you feel Muse has earned his rest.

I didn’t know what to expect from a second Quiet Company album, and in some ways, I feared the first one may have been a fluke. In retrospect, though, I’m not surprised that Everyone You Love Will Be Happy Soon is this good. This is the sound of Taylor Muse coming into his own, and what a sound that is. I only wish more people would get to hear it.

So here’s the deal. You can hear a bunch of songs from the new record here. If you like it, you can buy it here. Last time, I favorably compared Taylor Muse to Paul Simon, and this time, I’ve given his record a better review than U2’s. That should tell you something. Click over and check it out. You won’t regret it.

Next week, well, I’m spoiled for choice. Neko Case? Soundtrack of Our Lives? Chris Cornell? Cursive? Buddy and Julie Miller? Could be any of them. Join me in seven days to find out.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So they finally made a Watchmen movie. I’ve seen it twice. Let me tell you about it. I will try to do it without spoilers, but I can’t promise anything, so be warned.

* * * * *

Watchmen is not about superheroes.

This is the first thing you need to know if you plan on seeing the movie. If you go in expecting good guys and bad guys, Batmen and Jokers, you’re going to be baffled. The book sent a seismic shock through the comics industry when in came out in 1986, and 23 years later, its pitch-dark vision hasn’t lost any of its punch. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons essentially took Stan Lee’s approach to its logical, nihilistic extreme – Lee gave his superheroes real-world problems, then laid them over fantastical backdrops, but Moore and Gibbons went all the way.

The question Watchmen posits is this: what would costumed heroes really be like? What kind of people would actually dress up as bats or owls and prowl the night, looking for rights to wrong? Well, they’d be disturbed personalities who get off on the rush of violence. They’d be attention-seekers looking for the spotlight. Or they’d be psychopaths with an insanely heightened sense of justice. These are the characters of Watchmen. People crazy enough to think they can turn the tide of human nature. And one of them is crazy enough to think he can save the world.

I bring this up because many reviewers are missing this fundamental point. Some have complained that they don’t know who to root for. Some have supposed that Rorschach, the obviously mentally damaged and hyper-violent vigilante that sets the movie’s plot in motion, is in fact the hero. He’s not. There aren’t any heroes. You’re not supposed to root for any of these people, and if the ending leaves you wondering about the moral compasses of everyone, including your own, then it’s done its job. Watchmen is not about superheroes. It’s about people.

What would costumed heroes be like? Imagine the worst people you know. Now give them anonymity and autonomy – free rein to do whatever they want with no consequences. That’s what they’d really be like.

* * * * *

So I’ve been dreading a Watchmen movie for about 15 years now.

Part of the reason for this is that Watchmen is defiantly a comic book. It’s not a storyboard, it does not have aspirations towards any other storytelling method. It does not propose ideas beyond its medium, it explores its medium to the fullest with its ideas. The book is partially a commentary on comics from the 1930s to the 1980s, and no matter what, there’s just no way a screen adaptation could (or would) capture that.

The context is just one of those things I had to let go, and I’d been preparing for that for years. But as I heard about the on-and-off plans for this movie over the last decade and a half, I realized there were some things I just couldn’t let go. I really boiled it down to a couple. I mentioned the biggest one above – any attempt to turn these people into heroes would have turned my stomach.

Also, the alternate 1980s setting was sacrosanct, as far as I was concerned. The book pivots on the escalating arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the threat of nuclear war always in the background. Only one period in our history gives you that perfect sense of all-consuming dread that Watchmen needs. Pushing it forward in time, making it contemporary, swapping in George W. Bush and the Iraq war – these were all ideas honestly mooted during Watchmen’s long journey to the screen, and I think I pulled a decent percentage of my hair out just reading about them.

Finally, there’s the ending. I’ve said before, I don’t care about the mechanics of it. The morality of it, the theme, is what’s important. The ending of Watchmen is about what it really takes to save the world, and it’s not the superheroic throwdown that the studios were likely expecting. I worried that the ending would be changed, that the deliberately comic-booky tone of the penultimate chapters would be carried through. They’re a feint, you see. A trick, a joke. The messy, complex world of Watchmen cannot have a simplistic ending wrapped in a bow. It just can’t.

Adding to my sense of dread was the seemingly endless succession of terrible Alan Moore screen adaptations. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. From Hell. Constantine. V for Vendetta. Endings changed, characters eviscerated, and in some cases, entire foundational concepts burned at the stake. Alan Moore may be the most thoughtful writer the medium of comics has ever produced, but his on-screen legacy is littered with brain-dead wrecks. (Keanu Reeves as John Constantine? In Los Angeles? Really??)

Moore himself gave up on Hollywood a long time ago. He has asked that his name be removed from adaptations of his works – he can’t stop them, because much of Moore’s output has been for the major companies, who end up owning his books, and can sell the rights to production companies without his consent. He even gives his portion of the movie money to his original collaborators – Eddie Campbell on From Hell, for example, or David Lloyd on V for Vendetta. Moore has no hope that any adaptation will do his work justice, and maybe he’s right to think this way. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be Alan Moore, watching the League movie. I shudder just thinking about it.

But I’m not Moore, and I tried to remain hopeful. The movie passed through hands both talented and not so talented before landing with Zack Snyder, the man who adapted Frank Miller’s 300 a few years ago. This is only Snyder’s third film, but he’s shown a genuine love for the comics medium, and a penchant for remaining faithful to an author’s vision. I had hope.

The cast was announced. Almost entirely unknowns. Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. Billy Crudup (the movie’s biggest name) as Dr. Manhattan. Patrick Wilson (who?) as Nite Owl. I started getting excited – Snyder seemed to know that big-name actors would only be distracting for characters this indelible. The trailers began appearing. Dr. Manhattan looked amazing. His clockwork palace on Mars looked exactly right. The Owlship. Rorschach’s shifting mask. Everything was right. I started getting very excited.

I ended up taking four hours off in the middle of the day last Friday to see the movie. As the lights dimmed and the screen turned yellow for the opening credits, I could barely breathe. I was watching Watchmen, and I wasn’t scared. I was thrilled.

* * * * *

Realistically speaking, I could not have asked for a better Watchmen movie.

That sounds like faint praise, and I don’t mean it as such. This movie is a miracle. Had it been 60 percent faithful to Moore and Gibbons, it would have been impressive. But 99.9 percent faithful is just… amazing. I know Alan Moore will never see this, but he could not have found someone more respectful of his work and his intentions than Zack Snyder. Even in places where the story has been altered, the intent has remained true. Snyder’s not just a fan, he’s practically an acolyte, and I love him for it.

The movie opens with the murder of the Comedian, also known as Edward Blake. It’s a nasty, violent scene, and it sets the tone well. Then we’re off into the most amazing credits sequence I’ve seen in ages – a parade of images that give you the back story of Watchmen brilliantly, set to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changing.” There’s a ton of exposition covered in artful silence here, and a number of very important character clues sprinkled throughout. I would have paid full price just to see this sequence again.

And then, Snyder adapts the first six chapters of the book, almost verbatim. It was incredible to watch. Even the tricky fourth chapter, giving Dr. Manhattan’s back story as he reminisces on Mars, is as exact as it could be. I’m sure dozens of screenwriters struggled with this sequence, trying to make its shifting times and settings more accessible for a moviegoing audience. David Hayter and Alex Tse just wrote Moore’s words down, and Snyder essentially shot the comic, nearly panel for panel. And it works brilliantly.

Above all in this first half, Snyder and his screenwriters kept the most important thing front and center – these are not heroes. Rorschach seems like the central character at first, but his intense origin story (truncated a little here) puts him at the fringes, just as he should be. Jon Osterman (Dr. Manhattan) is distant, shallow, and self-obsessed, qualities you wouldn’t expect from a big blue god. (Or maybe you would, which is the point.) Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl) is flabby and retreating, a middle-aged failure. Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre) is an emotional mess, living in the shadow of her mother and tired of a life as Jon’s lover.

I could go on, but you get the point. Snyder got everything right. And even though he veers off the track somewhat in the second half, it’s never to the movie’s detriment – he adds only a couple of scenes invented from whole cloth, and does his best to deliver a faithful treatment of even Moore’s less considered moments. It’s a dense book, which makes for a complicated movie, but by the end, you really feel the conflicts of these characters. It’s superbly done.

* * * * *

The cast is variable, unfortunately. At the top of the heap is Jackie Earle Haley, who simply is Rorschach. I have been terrified of just how Rorschach would come across on screen for years. Would he be cheesy? Would they turn him into a hero? But Haley is amazing. With the constantly-morphing mask on, he has only his voice, but he nails Rorschach’s dispassionate growl. With his mask off, he is simply incredible – he has the character’s detached stare down perfectly. His scenes with the prison psychologist are a highlight, and I was pleased to see that Hayter and Tse rescued Rorschach’s best line – in the book, it’s an offhand recollection written down in the psychologist’s journal, but in the movie, he says it, and delivers it perfectly.

(You will know the line when you hear it. I don’t want to give it away here. Suffice it to say, it caps off the prison cafeteria scene, and it brought gasps and cheers both times I saw the film.)

Billy Crudup is excellent as well. I’d always imagined Dr. Manhattan with a booming, omnipotent voice, but his thin tones work even better – they are bored and disengaged, which Osterman often is, a side effect of omniscience. The special effects team did wonders with this big blue monstrosity, and the best part is, you can still see Crudup at the character’s center. Also excellent was Patrick Wilson, as the schlubby Dreiberg, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, as the psychotic Comedian.

But there are two characters I probably would have re-cast. The flaws are not fatal, but they are significant. First is Malin Akerman as Laurie Juspeczyk. To start, she’s just too young to play this part. Her character talks about things she did 15 years ago, and I found myself thinking, “What, when you were eight?” But more than that, Laurie is the emotional center of the movie – so much of this orbits around her feelings, her pain. And I didn’t quite feel that from Akerman. Her big scene on Mars in chapter nine comes off a bit flat, and I didn’t quite buy her love story with Dan, a big part of the second hour.

And then there is Matthew Goode, as Adrian Veidt, a.k.a. Ozymandias. In many ways, Veidt is Watchmen’s most complex character, and Goode’s performance is frustratingly one-note. What I wanted, and didn’t get, was the weight of responsibility Veidt feels. We don’t get any of his sadness, just his confidence. Also, Veidt’s last panel in the book is his one moment of terrified doubt, and I wish we could have seen that in the movie. Goode is also too young to play Ozymandias, and what should be world-weary determinism comes off as brash arrogance. Of all of them, I wish this performance had been different.

Snyder didn’t help matters by faithfully copying one of the missteps of the book – we don’t get to know Adrian very well. He’s sidelined for much of the story, until he steps center-stage. I would have liked an origin story, some sense of why he does what he does. In the book, it’s told in little moments, and in a text piece at the end of chapter 11. The movie keeps the moments, but Goode’s performance doesn’t let us in. Reading the book, we know that Veidt watching the map burn at the first and only meeting of the Crimebusters was a major moment, one that led to his later actions. That’s in the movie, but we don’t really feel the weight of it on Adrian, and I wish we did.

* * * * *

Do I have problems with the movie? Oh, yeah. As wonderful as it is, there are still some things I’d have done differently, and I expect every fan has his/her own list. Some of mine:

The violence has been ramped up for the film. The book was more suggestive about it, but the movie is very in-your-face, particularly when Dan and Laurie are attacked in an alley. I understand the points Snyder is making, but I fear this scene undermines the characters a bit.

Dr. Manhattan’s big blue penis is on display quite frequently. I get the symbolism, and didn’t really care that much, but I worry that it will be a distraction for moviegoers not as invested in the story as I am.

Speaking of phallic symbols, the other one – President Nixon’s protruding proboscis – is a little too, pardon the expression, on the nose.

The music choices were okay, but pedestrian. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” in particular invites laughs over Dan and Laurie’s sex scene, although those laughs will come anyway once the flamethrower is triggered. (Trust me, it’s funny.) Here’s one they did right, though – see if you can spot Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” played under a key scene.

Carla Gugino’s makeup, as the aging Sally Jupiter, is not very convincing.

The second hour seems to lose its way, as the sense of impending dread fades into the background. In the book, it’s kept front and center with other characters, small parts that didn’t make it into the movie. I like what’s there, and it makes sense to focus on our main characters, but I don’t feel the same sense of movement I do in the book.

The context and subtext is largely missing, which I expected. You wouldn’t really get the idea, watching this movie, why the book made it onto Time Magazine’s list of 100 greatest novels. It doesn’t feel as important without the subtext scattered throughout. And no movie could replicate this book’s impact on comics as a medium and on pop culture, which informs every re-read. Not Snyder’s fault at all, but still.

I can think of more, but I’ll stop there. As you can tell, these are all minor quibbles, not devastating flaws. For every missed step, Snyder took ten that are sure and steady. All in all, I am happy.

* * * * *

Of course, I have to talk about the ending.

I will try to do so without giving it away, which will be a challenge. For much of its running time, Watchmen seems to be headed for a heroes-and-villains denouement, a Dark Knight-style rumble. The subversion of that expectation is one of Alan Moore’s finest moments, and I have read with dismay as many critics have dismissed the ending as anti-climactic. That, of course, is the entire point – the unexpected events, and the characters’ reactions to them, are the book. And, blessedly, they are the movie too.

Yes, the ending is different. You may have seen the phrase “giant squid” in some reviews, and I can tell you that no such squid appears in the film. What does appear, astonishingly, is something better, something more elegant, that allows Snyder to retain every emotional moment of Moore’s finale. The mechanics are different, but the beats, the themes, the philosophical questions – they are all the same. Snyder and his screenwriters even kept Veidt’s best line, in many ways my favorite in the entire book.

I’ve been thinking long and hard about this, and I believe it’s true – the new ending is better. It doesn’t pack the same punch as the original, partly because the book’s momentum is lost somewhat in the film’s second hour. But when it happens, it still comes as a fantastic surprise. And every moment after that is perfect. Haley in particular knocks his final scenes out of the park. In the final analysis, how the ending happens doesn’t matter, just that it does. And here, it dovetails with the rest of the plot much more thoroughly.

The first time I saw Watchmen, I was watching with a critical eye, looking for deviations from the book. The ending was a white-knuckle journey for me – I could just see the cop-out coming, the studio-mandated sugar being coated on. And as it unfolded, I slowly relaxed – it wasn’t until an hour or so later that it struck me just how well Snyder had pulled this off. The second time, I sat back and enjoyed it, and I have to tell you, it quite simply works.

It really works.

* * * * *

Watchmen the film will never be Watchmen the book.

For all the effort Snyder put in capturing moments large and small, the essence of Watchmen can’t be translated to the screen. The story has survived intact, and amazingly, the emotions and themes have as well. But the experience of reading the book is its own thing, one I highly recommend.

Will people who haven’t read the book respond well to the movie? I don’t know. It’s a dense film, and it doesn’t work overtime to make non-believers care. I tried to imagine what I would think had I never encountered these characters or their world before, and I couldn’t do it. But as someone who has read the book, over and over again, I’m deliriously happy with Snyder’s adaptation. Could it have been better? Of course. But it could have been so much worse, too.

After 15 years of worrying about this, I can finally exhale. The Watchmen movie is here, and it’s better than I ever hoped it would be. I expected I would see this once, out of obligation. Now I am making plans to see it a third and fourth time, out of unbridled joy and admiration. Go ahead and watch this Watchmen – while it isn’t the book, much of what I love is here. Thank you, Zack Snyder, for taking such care with this book. It’s just a story about people in costumes, but it’s pretty important to me, and I appreciate it.

Oh, and David Hayter? All is forgiven.

* * * * *

As a side note, this is why I run my own website. I can’t imagine any publication paying me (or even allowing me) to write more than 3,000 words on the Watchmen movie. Thanks for making it this far. I’m done now.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Final Edition

Some of you may have seen that the Rocky Mountain News closed its doors last week.

The Rocky was one of Denver’s two major newspapers, along with the Denver Post. It had been around for just shy of 150 years. For the last month, it had been up for sale, but its corporate owners just couldn’t find anyone willing to buy a newspaper in these terrible economic times. So with one final edition, printed on Friday, an institution stopped its presses for the last time.

The Rocky is the first major newspaper to crumble under the weight of changing times. It won’t be the last, and it won’t even be the last this year, I guarantee it. Newspapers are in trouble. They were in trouble before the national economy took a tumble, but they’re in even worse shape now. The Internet has proven both a boon to news gathering and delivery, and a millstone around our necks. Shrinking reporting staffs around the country are working harder than ever to keep up with a 24-hour news cycle that demands we give our work away for free.

It’s like a death spiral, and it’s not going to get any better until we figure out how to make up lost ad revenue online. We don’t know how we’re going to pull out of this, and the Rocky’s demise raises the question of whether we’ll pull out at all. If you think the media sucks now, wait until it’s all bloggers and “citizen journalists,” with no newsroom training, but with agendas galore. If you love your newspaper, please support it. We need you more than ever.

Anyway, the Rocky staff produced a video to mark their last publication day. It’s 20 minutes long, but it’s riveting stuff, showing the real human cost when a newspaper goes under. I think “It was scheduled for Saturday” is the saddest thing I’ve heard in a long time. You can watch the video and read the Rocky staff’s thoughts on a century and a half of publishing here.

* * * * *

Are You My Mummy?

Porcupine Tree was on my to-do list for far too long.

I expect most music fans have one of these lists. Mine contains three dozen or so bands I’ve been meaning to get into, but haven’t yet taken the plunge on. The more music I hear, the more I’m aware of just how much music I haven’t heard, and the to-do list keeps on growing. It’s like this guy I once knew who went to strip clubs all the time. He was asked once why he keeps going, and his reply was, “Because I haven’t seen all the titties.”

The first Porcupine Tree album I heard was In Absentia, from 2002. It was louder than I expected, but very good stuff, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Turns out, 2002 was a good year to jump aboard, since PT mastermind Steven Wilson began remastering and reissuing the band’s catalog that year. I gleefully bought all of them, and marveled at the metamorphosis Porcupine Tree had undergone. I guess you could call them progressive, but they started as a more psychedelic, space-music outfit, and only gradually allowed the guitar to take over. 2007’s Fear of a Blank Planet was the apex of the new approach – loud and thudding, melodic and graceful, massive and grand.

So after all this work establishing Porcupine Tree’s identity over the last decade, what does Wilson do? He goes and makes a solo album, one that returns to the Pink Floyd-esque soundscapes his band used to create. I can see why the just-released Insurgentes would be released under Wilson’s name, instead of the band’s – with only a few exceptions, these just aren’t Porcupine Tree songs anymore.

But man, they’re good ones. Wilson has described this as the most experimental song-based music he’s ever made, and I think that’s about right. There aren’t any 15-minute noise experiments on here, but the songs are much less structured than anything Porcupine Tree’s done in some time, and the entire record is about texture and mood. Most of it’s slow and spacey, the vocals are usually low in the mix, lyrics are fragments instead of whole thoughts, and songs will flip inside out at a moment’s notice, rarely ending up where they began.

Opener “Harmony Korine” is one of the most straightforward, wafting in on chiming guitars and building its simple frame into a guitar-heavy powerhouse. I’m not sure what this song has to do with the real Korine, writer of Kids and director of Julien Donkey-Boy and Gummo. (The chorus is “Feel no shame, too brave, feel afraid to wait forever.”) Could be Wilson just liked the name. Regardless, it’s some time before you get another rolling-guitar anthem on Insurgentes again.

Rather, you get pieces like the eight-minute “Salvaging,” which begins with a foghorn, stomps through four minutes of stoner-metal repetition, and then suddenly blossoms into a strings-and-ambience second half. Don’t get too comfortable, however – Wilson builds up the white noise, collapsing the entire piece end over end before it’s finished. You’re almost grateful for the gorgeous, linear “Veneno Para las Hadas” (loosely, “To Poison a Fairy”), with its thundercloud guitars letting loose a light rain of piano. This is one of the album’s most beautiful songs – two fragmented verses, and a soaring wordless chorus.

Insurgentes stumbles with the other eight-minute piece, “No Twilight Within the Courts of the Sun,” which sadly lives down to its King Crimson-esque title. Little more than a pasted-together studio jam, this song features Crimson bassist Tony Levin and Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess, and it sounds like it. It does nothing for the album’s mood, and drags on far too long. (A more placid instrumental with the same players, “Twilight Coda,” is much better.)

But that’s the one track I have trouble with, and it’s followed by my favorite, “Significant Other.” We’re back to otherworldly atmospheres here, this time with a memorable melody in tow, and some astonishing backing vocals by Clodagh Simmonds. “Only Child” is a creepy song reminiscent of the Church, and “Get All You Deserve” provides the album’s climax – it starts off quietly enough, in a Thom Yorke vein, but since Wilson is credited with playing “total fucking noise” in the liner notes, you know it won’t stay that way. And the title song is a pretty piano coda to close things out.

So what do we have here? Insurgentes is a Porcupine Tree album that isn’t, a record that balances the band’s later, song-based records with its earlier, more experimental works. We have a solo album from a guy who basically is his band, carving out a wholly separate identity. But mostly, we have an album of superb musical landscapes, another jewel in an already glittering catalog. This may not be the best place to start with Wilson – try any of the last few Porcupine Tree albums first. But once his off-kilter style takes hold, you’re going to want this. I hope we see more like this from Wilson, a singular artist stepping out under his own name for a whole ‘nother trip.

Oh, one more thing – you won’t get the title I chose for this section unless a) you’ve seen the Insurgentes cover, and b) you’re a Doctor Who fan. If you have seen a) and are b), though, it’s pretty funny. Trust me.

* * * * *

Thoughts before watching Watchmen

I honestly didn’t expect to feel like this.

We’ve got only a few days to go before Zack Snyder’s Watchmen film hits theaters. It’s actually going to happen. People have seen it. I’ve read reviews already. I’ve been dreading a Watchmen movie in general, if not this Watchmen movie in particular, for about 15 years or so, and on Friday, I’m actually going to head on down to a theater, plunk down some cash and sit through this thing. And I’m feeling… honestly…

Excited.

I expected it would feel like a chore, or an obligation. I have to see the Watchmen movie, no matter how it is, simply because it’s the Watchmen movie, and if that doesn’t explain it, I probably won’t be able to. I envisioned dragging myself down to the cinema, my unwilling feet propelled by a sense of fanboyish duty.

“I don’t want to go,” my feet would say.

“But it’s Watchmen,” I’d cajole in return. “We have to.”

“But it’s going to suck,” they’d reply, and I would have no argument. And then I would seek treatment.

I have read and re-read Watchmen more than any other book, I believe. If there’s a close contender, it’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a series which, in comparison, could not be more opposite in tone, although a similar core of hopelessness runs through both. Douglas Adams believed everything was ridiculous and should be destroyed, but he chose to laugh about it. In a way, he’s the Comedian, the character that is brutally murdered in Watchmen’s opening pages. He got the joke. The older I get, the clearer that joke becomes.

Watchmen, as I am sure you know, is a graphic novel. Written by Alan Moore, drawn by Dave Gibbons. It is 23 years old, and yet it is still the most perfect synthesis of artist and author I have seen, and the book which makes the most of the unique and fascinating language of comics. Watchmen starts off looking like a superhero story, but in the end, has so thoroughly subverted both the smaller genre of superhero stories and the larger genre of comics that it could stand as the medium’s last word, if it weren’t so damn inspiring.

It is a complex, layered, multi-tiered story about what it takes – what it really takes – to save the world. I have read it probably two dozen times, and each time, the end of the 11th chapter arrives like a kick in the stomach. Its conclusions are inescapable, its plot seemingly preordained, and yet, its impact surprises me, every time. It is a tough, uncompromising story with no easy answers, no simple characters. It is also, to many, the standard-bearer of this thing I love called comics, one of the most perfectly realized (and certainly one of the most famous) graphic novels ever created.

Moore himself has called it unfilmable. (Of course, he’s also a perpetually grouchy curmudgeon who worships a snake god.) Directors have come and gone over 23 years – Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky, to name two – and each has given up on Watchmen. Eight years ago, X-Men screenwriter David Hayter was set to direct, which led a much younger me to call for his death. (I have issues.) I would rather see no Watchmen movie than a bad one.

Why? It’s simple, but convoluted, honestly. I’ve been talking about Watchmen for more than 15 years – evangelizing about it, even. Most of the people I’ve pushed it on haven’t read it. But I’m betting they’ll go see a Watchmen movie, and whatever ends up on screen, that’s what they’ll think I’ve been talking about for 15 years. It’s really my credibility I’m worried about, which, in retrospect, isn’t a great reason to call for a man’s death. (More like a mediocre reason at best.)

Watchmen would be so easy to screw up. And when I heard that Zack Snyder, the punk behind Dawn of the Dead and 300, had taken up the challenge, I sighed. 300 was visually striking, and a pretty faithful page-to-screen translation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel. But it’s pretty simple. Nothing in Snyder’s oeuvre convinced me he could handle this.

So why am I excited? Because I think, as best as he could, Snyder may have gotten it right.

This movie will not be Watchmen the book. I understand that. But Snyder seems to have done everything in his power to stay true to the story and tone (and even the dialogue) of the book. There is a scene in the trailer of Dr. Manhattan building his clockwork fortress on Mars, and when I saw it, my heart skipped a beat. It is exactly right. Interviews and behind-the-scenes footage show a director working like mad to create something as faithful as he can make it. And Dave Gibbons liked it, which is a good sign. (There’s no pleasing Moore, who will not see it on principle.)

Two things I am still worried about.

First is the acting. Nothing has dropped my spirits more in the past few weeks than seeing actual clips of these characters talking. I am specifically concerned about Malin Ackerman as Laurie, and Matthew Goode as Adrian. Goode is way too young and small to be Ozymandias, so he has to show me that he’s right for the part in other ways. And Ackerman, from what I’ve seen, may not be up to the arc her character has to travel.

The second is the ending. I know, I’ve been reassured over and over, but I’m still worried. The mechanics of the ending have changed, but if the meaning remains the same, I will be happy. In truth, the mechanics were never that thrilling to me, so if Snyder has managed the same commentary on life through different means, I will be happy. (Quick update – I’ve read a synopsis of the new ending, and if they pull it off, I think it might actually be better than the original. It’s at least a more elegant way of making the same point. Which is sort of miraculous, really.)

But I expected that list to be pages long at this point, and it isn’t, because so much of this seems to be just right. I don’t even mind that the name of the team has changed from Minutemen to Watchmen, to match the title. I get why Snyder would do that. It’s silly, but I get it. It’s a small price to pay for a true Watchmen movie.

I am daring to hope that Watchmen works. Everything I have seen screams to me that it does. Every review I read assuages my fear more and more. It may, actually, against all odds, be a terrific, faithful adaptation of this near-unfilmable book. I hope so. And so I will go to the theater Friday with a spring in my step, and no dread in my heart. Watchmen is a movie, and I am actually out-of-my-skin excited to see it.

More next week, after I have.

Also next week, the returns of U2 and the great Quiet Company.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

By the time you read this, I will have participated in my first panel discussion as a semi-professional music writer.

My friend Benjie Hughes runs a full-service recording studio in Aurora and plays in a band himself. But that’s not enough for Mr. Hughes – he’s taken it upon himself to bring the entire music-making and music-loving community together, in a spirit of community and cooperation, through a number of terrific regular events. And one of them, he calls The Guild – it’s a monthly meeting of those in the biz, comparing notes and talking music.

I’ve only been able to make a couple of these meetings, but they’re always a blast. I sometimes feel like the odd man out – I love music, but I haven’t made my own music in a long time, and I never got paid for it. Likewise, I was the only one on the panel Monday night who doesn’t currently get paid to write about music. I just do it ‘cause I love it, and I’d probably do it anyway.

Through the power of time travel, I am writing this before appearing on Monday’s panel, so I can’t possibly tell you how it went yet. (Update: I thought it went very well. Time travel is awesome!) But if you’re coming to this column for the first time thanks to that discussion, thank you, and welcome. This one’s gonna be a bit random – we’re still waiting for the big spring releases to start coming down the pike – but hopefully not a waste of your time. Come on back. We’ll be here every week.

* * * * *

I’ve spent the week listening to two records, over and over.

The first of them isn’t out yet, but after years of secrecy, it leaked to an Australian music service last week, and you know, game over. Of course, I’m talking about U2’s No Line on the Horizon. I’ve heard it six times now, and it remains one of the long-running band’s most confounding records for me in this early going – I’m not sure what I think of it from day to day.

My first reaction was almost roundly negative. No Line is a departure from the last two U2 records, 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind and 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Those albums found the quartet regaining its snarl, its scrappy fire, after a decade of wandering the ironic-pop wilderness. More than that, though, they captured Bono and the boys in a journeyman period, writing the kind of tight, well-crafted pop songs only seasoned professionals can put together. More conservative records? Probably, but they were solid and consistent ones, for the first time in ages.

No Line on the Horizon brings back the sonic experimentation of their Achtung Baby period, but too often marries it to weak, half-formed song ideas. On first listen, my heart sank over and over – the title track has a thick sound but a thin skeleton and almost no chorus, “Moment of Surrender” nearly kills the album dead with seven minutes of go-nowhere repetition, and I still don’t quite know what they were going for on the meandering, half-chanted “Unknown Caller.” I’ve heard “Get On Your Boots” 20 times, and I still don’t like it, but I was surprised what a jolt of energy it delivers to this languid affair. “White as Snow” is very pretty, but takes its central melody directly from “O Come, O Come Emanuel.” I just sighed loudly again and again, thinking, “This is it? Five years, and this is what you’ve got?”

There were highlights, even on that first listen, most notably track two, “Magnificent,” which lives up to its title. Has there ever been a band able to get the most out of a single repeated lick like this one can? “Magnificent” only has the one, but it’s pretty amazing. I also quite liked “Stand Up Comedy” and “Breathe,” two of the more straightforward numbers, and closer “Cedars of Lebanon” is stark, off-kilter and unnerving – it’s taken me some time to realize that it’s exactly right.

The rest is still a struggle, but it’s growing on me. I realize I’m bringing a lot to this album, including a strong desire to like it – U2 has been one of the most important bands of my life, and they’ve been on such a roll lately, I’d hate to watch them flame out with an overthought, underwritten misfire. At some point, though, I may just have to accept that’s what they’ve delivered. No Line is a big, sweeping experience, but inside, it feels oddly empty.

And of course, good ol’ David Fricke gave it five stars…

Anyway, the listening continues. Full review to come after the album’s official release on March 3.

* * * * *

But I said I’ve been listening to two records, and the other one was a surprise. It’s the 20th anniversary reissue of Paul’s Boutique, by the Beastie Boys, and can I just talk for a minute about how freaking awesome this album is?

Embarrassingly enough, my first Beastie experiences came from my sister, who played Licensed to Ill again and again when we were kids. I was 12, and she was nine, and why my mother let her even have that tape, I don’t know. I was morally opposed to it while mom and dad were around, but secretly enamored with it when they weren’t. I remember joining a few of my friends at summer camp one year in a terrible parody version of “Fight for Your Right,” championing our rights as kids to stay home if we wanted to. I was a nerdy child.

Paul’s Boutique came out when I was 15, and I bought it on cassette. Solid black plastic tape, old-school Capitol Records logo, lyrics printed as one long paragraph, black on sea green, with drawings of fish as decoration. And a panoramic cover photo that just kept folding out and out and out. I didn’t even know what cool was at that age, but Paul’s Boutique was cool.

Here’s the thing, though. Listening to this and Licensed to Ill back to back, it’s hard to imagine now, but everyone – everyone – was disappointed in Paul’s Boutique when it came out. I swear, we were. It’s like we all said, “You know, this insanely clever pop-cultural blender of a head trip of an album is okay, but I’d rather hear ‘Brass Monkey’ again. Where is this album’s ‘Girls’?” That’s just insane. But true story, kids, the album was dead on arrival, and the Beasties written off as a novelty band that just couldn’t keep the joke going.

What the hell were we thinking? Paul’s Boutique is a massive step up in every single way from the frat-boy idiocy of Ill. In fact, even now, there are few albums that sound as cool as this one does. Just about every second of the music has been sampled from other sources, cut and spliced and re-edited into new shapes – Paul’s Boutique joins the first three De La Soul albums as the best arguments ever put forward for sampling as an art form. Classic rock sits alongside Motown soul and jazz and a hundred other things. Lines from other songs and movies are inserted to complete jokes, or finish up rhymes. Years before Quentin Tarantino made his first movie, the Dust Brothers and the Beasties made something in his style, raiding 40 years of pop culture to make something out of time.

I mean, leave aside ass-kickers like “Shake Your Rump” and “Hey Ladies” for the moment, have you heard “Egg Man”? A vandalism party in three minutes, the song is simply dizzying – just try to spot all the samples. If you need a cheat sheet, go here. They sample Public Enemy, Curtis Mayfield, Tower of Power, Cheech and Chong, and the scores to Cape Fear and Psycho, all in the same song. Later they hit Loggins and Messina, the Eagles, the Beatles, a million different movies, Johnny Cash, and every great funk drum beat ever. It’s seamless and brilliant – these are new songs, not stolen hooks.

But that’s not all. The Beasties discovered their a-game on Paul’s Boutique, perfecting their old-school absurdism style of lyric writing. These white guys have, like, no flow at all, but it doesn’t matter – they are brilliant at what they do. Here’s just a sampling of amazing lines, all taken from just the first song, “Shake Your Rump”:

“So like a pimp I’m pimpin, got a boat to eat shrimp in, nothing wrong with my leg, just B-Boy limping…”

“Got arrested at Mardi Gras for jumping on a float, my man MCA’s got a beard like a billy goat…”

“Like Sam the butcher bringing Alice the meat, like Fred Flintstone driving around with bald feet…”

“Running from the law, the press and the parents, ‘Is your name Michael Diamond?’ ‘Nah, mine’s Clarence…’”

And of course, “I got the peg leg at the end of my stump, shake your rump…”

They mean nothing. They are awesome. The whole record’s full of them. In many ways, the Beasties never got this good at this kind of thing again – later records brought in funk instrumentals, punk interludes and a social conscience, leaving less room for this kind of inspired lunacy. At track 13 on this album is perhaps the greatest Beastie song of them all, “Shadrach,” in which these Jewish boys co-opt the names of three friends of Daniel in the Old Testament, and then declare they “got more stories than J.D. got Salinger,” all over samples from “Hot and Nasty” and “Loose Booty.” It’s stunning, even 20 years later.

Paul’s Boutique isn’t perfect – it does end with the still-baffling, 12-minute mish-mash “B-Boy Bouillabaisse,” after all – but it is pretty close, and if you haven’t heard it, you really should. A 20-year anniversary edition of this thing certainly makes me feel old, but the joyous, endlessly inventive music it contains makes me feel young again. I love this album.

* * * * *

And so we wait for the good stuff, but believe me, it’s coming. March, all by itself, is going to set me back about $500, but it’s going to be worth it. Here’s a look at what’s coming:

On March 3, we get new ones from Neko Case, Soundtrack of Our Lives, Robert Pollard’s new band Boston Spaceships, Revolting Cocks, Buddy and Julie Miller, and some little band called U2. (I think they could be big one day. Keep your eye on ‘em.) The next week, look out for Chris Cornell, Cursive, and a reissue of Beth Orton’s still-awesome Trailer Park.

March 17 sees only former Early November frontman Ace Enders’ solo album, When I Hit the Ground, released under the name Ace Enders and a Million Different People. But March 24 hits us with the new Decemberists, Hazards of Love; the new Indigo Girls, Poseidon and the Bitter Bug; new things from Mastodon, Pet Shop Boys, KMFDM and MxPx; deluxe reissues of the first three Radiohead albums and the first Pearl Jam disc; and the first new album from Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery’s side band, The Wishing Tree, in more than 10 years. Whew! Damn.

The last week of the month will brings us the long-awaited second collaboration between PJ Harvey and John Parish, the we-promise-this-time last offering from Ministry (called Adios, because that worked so well for KMFDM), and new things from Bruce Cockburn, Peter Bjorn and John, and Gavin DeGraw. Oh, and Queensryche’s new album, a so-earnest-it’s-probably-awful concept record called American Soldier.

April! We have new records on the way from Doves, Bob Mould, The Hold Steady (their first live document), Fastball, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Depeche Mode, Jars of Clay, Great Northern, and Heaven and Hell, the Dio-era Black Sabbath under their new name. Oh, and Ben Folds will release his University A Cappella project – it’s a collection of renditions of his songs by college a cappella acts. His maddest idea yet? Maybe so…

You already know Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown is slated for May 5, but you may not know that May will also bring us new Isis, the solo debut from Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle, a two-disc rarities collection from Iron and Wine, and, at the furthest point on my release calendar right now, Veckatimest, the third record from Grizzly Bear. Look back at that list. As spring seasons go, that ain’t bad.

* * * * *

A couple of random (well, more random) notes before signing off.

I was about 75 percent on my Oscar picks, as it turns out. I was pulling for Mickey Rourke, since I don’t think the Academy is going to have the chance to honor him again for a performance like this. But I wouldn’t have missed Sean Penn’s “you commie homo-loving sons-o-guns” speech. Penelope Cruz surprised me, but I suppose Viola Davis needs a more substantial role to catch the voters’ attention. And it was Kate Winslet’s year, and I feel dumb for not realizing that.

But hooray for Slumdog Millionaire, the little film that could. I think this movie tapped into the cultural zeitgeist in a way no one was prepared for – when Danny Boyle was shooting his Mumbai fairy tale, he couldn’t have known that the U.S. economic situation would soon make the story of a hard-luck kid getting everything he wants seem relevant. But also, there’s a verve, an energy to this movie that none of the other nominees had. It’s joyous, alive filmmaking at its best, and I’m glad to see it honored.

So last week, I took shots at the premiere episode of Dollhouse, so it’s only fair that I mention the second, which was a marked improvement. It still wasn’t particularly engaging, but it was tense, and layered, and made me care a little bit more. It’s telling that this episode did not come from creator Joss Whedon, but from Stephen DeKnight, one of the brightest lights of Whedon’s Angel writing staff. Maybe some of the writers care about this show more than Whedon does, and can ignite his creative spark. We’ll see.

Next week, a look at Steven Wilson’s Insurgentes. And maybe that Colin Baker column. We’ll see. For now, I’m going to listen to No Line on the Horizon again and try to like it more. Thanks for reading.

See you in line Tuesday morning.