I don’t know how to start talking about the new Choir album.

I suppose I can start with just how lucky I feel to be able to write those words in that order – the new Choir album. I started buying music at age 15 or so, and I first heard the Choir at age 16, after a steady diet of Def Leppard and Huey Lewis. I’d never heard anything like it – the deep guitar tones, the angelic voice of Derri Daugherty, the dark spiritual yearning of the lyrics. It was art, and I’d heard art before, but never like this, and never from a band I discovered on my own.

The album was called Circle Slide, and it changed my life. It’s such an amazing piece of work that even now, I listen to it once a month or so, and I’ve never grown tired of it. That’s almost half my life I’ve lived with Circle Slide, and next year it will actually be half my life, and I don’t foresee tossing it aside anytime soon. Every time I listen to it, I find something new to love.

For a long time, I would tell people that the Choir was the best band in the world, when what I really meant was that they’re my favorite band in the world. And you know, they really are. I’ve heard better bands, made up of better musicians who write better songs, but none of them hit me like the Choir does. I am emotionally drawn in to a Choir album like just about nothing else, from anyone else. If this means I’ve lost objectivity and cannot adequately appraise their work, then so be it. I’ll cop to it. I’d rather have one band like this that I love so completely than have perfect, clinical detachment any day of the week.

Even though I like Circle Slide best, nearly every Choir album is beautiful and wonderful in its own way. Chase the Kangaroo (1987) explored the reverb-drenched ambient side of the band, while Wide-Eyed Wonder (1989) is a perfect pop record, all acoustic guitars and lovely melodies. Speckled Bird (1994) kicked open a door that the band has yet to close, cranking up the fuzz factor and loudly rocking, while Free Flying Soul (1996) brought back the swirl, creating a low-budget masterpiece of oddness. The band’s first real stumble since the earliest days was Flap Your Wings (2000), which sported some good songs but floundered on many others. Still, the Choir spirit was there, even in the most straightforward of the tunes on Wings.

Here’s what the Choir is about – love through pain. They’re a religious band, no doubt, but they never preach, they never sermonize, and they never, ever talk at you. Choir songs (written most often by Daugherty and drummer Steve Hindalong) are about struggling with life, and about how faith eases that struggle. They talk with you, they communicate on a very human level, even as they reach for heavenly things. The Choir has never written a song about how much you (yes, YOU) need God, but they have written dozens about how much they need him, how impossible their lives would be without love and grace. I can’t explain it – let me just say that I hate most Christian music, but I have never been put off by the Choir, because they do what any good artist does: they open a window into their world and gently invite you in.

I approach a new Choir album, then, with a mix of joy and trepidation. Will this be the album that tarnishes the whole catalog? Will this be the one that makes me wistfully yearn for the days when the Choir was good, the one that makes me wish that they’d followed through on one of their eight or so retirements? How long can they extend this streak? How many great records can they do? It didn’t help that they chose O How the Mighty Have Fallen as the title of this new one. I mean, talk about opening yourself up. I said this before, but if it turned out that the album sucked, I’d only have to repeat the title phrase and my review would be complete.

And then I saw the cover. Mighty has, easily, the most beautiful packaging of any Choir album since Circle Slide – the front cover is a photo of Daugherty’s son, Chance, testing out his Icarus wings in front of a starry night sky. The whole package is so gorgeous that my fear drifted away. This, I told myself, would be a good Choir record.

And it is. It is, perhaps, the best Choir record since Circle Slide. I’ve only lived with it for a day now, but I love it like a friend I’ve known for decades. It is everything I hoped it would be, and then some. While Flap Your Wings sounded at times like the last effort of a broken band, Mighty sounds like that band reborn, back at fighting weight, playing its collective heart out. The irony of the title is magnificent – after three good-to-great records with flight imagery in the title, here is one whose name conjures visions of crashing to earth, and it’s the most soaring thing they’ve done in more than a decade.

Credit must be given to the Choir’s new member, Marc Byrd. He’s an ambient guitar genius, the mastermind behind Common Children and Hammock, and his work is all over this album. The title track opens with oceans of reverbed guitar and Dan Michaels’ lyricon, and they stay all the way through, accenting Daughtery’s wonderful voice and Hindalong’s crashing drum beat. Byrd produced this record, too, and his work in that department is flawless. There are some records you meet head-on and shake hands with, and then there are some that you fall backwards into, so lush is the sound. This, at its best, is one of the latter ones.

But this isn’t Circle Slide II by any means. The Choir have finally found a way to bring all of their styles together, mixing the rock they’ve been playing since ’93 with the space sounds of their earlier work. Mighty is a rock record, but one that sounds more like a Choir rock record than anything they’ve done in this style. It’s 10 short songs, with pop melodies and choruses, that sound like they were recorded on Venus. It’s the perfect synthesis – a crunchy album that swirls, a swirly album that crunches. And the band seems to know they’ve found their sound. They are comfortable and confident on every track, and there is no weak link.

“Nobody Gets a Smooth Ride” gets my vote for best Choir rock song, next to “About Love” from Circle Slide. It just explodes from the speakers, huge and dominant, and yet there’s waves of ambience behind it, and a little Dan Michaels saxophone. “Fine Fun Time” also rocks, this one about how grateful the band is to know each other and have the lives they have. (It also extols the virtues of Husker Du, and you can’t go wrong with that.)

But it’s the slower, lovelier pieces that grab my attention and win my love. “How I Wish I Knew” is one of the prettiest things Daughtery has ever graced with his voice, a song of helplessness in the face of despair: “When your heart defies you, and the dark mystifies you, when the stars shine down from above, how I hope their light is enough…” “Terrible Mystery,” a song of lost love, floats on Daughtery’s acoustic guitar, Byrd’s effects and Hindalong’s always unconventional percussion, and “She’s Alright” simply takes flight. This should be a hit, and in my perfect world, it already is.

Despite its title, “Mercy Will Prevail” is a thunderous, minor-key stunner, and it contains the perfect Choir lyric: “I want to swear it’s true but it’s hard to believe it.” That’s what they’re all about – how difficult it is to maintain faith and belief when life is so unforgiving. “In the thrust of a bayonet, in the hour of deep regret, in a world gone insane, in the eye of a hurricane,” Daugherty sings, telling himself more than anyone else that mercy will prevail. This is old-school Choir, dark and wonderful.

And one song later, they bring the light. “To Rescue Me” is a gorgeous hymn, sparse and vibrant, all about needing to be saved – not just in the Jesus sense, but in the very real and literal “save me” sense. “When I can’t hold on much longer to a rope weathered and frayed, when I can’t find hope and I’m losing faith,” Daugherty sings, and you can feel in his voice that the savior that reaches in to rescue him is real to him. It’s an absolutely beautiful song, whatever you believe, and a great way to end the album.

I don’t know what else to say, really. My favorite band is back, better than they’ve been in many years. I love this record. I love this band. I feel so grateful and fortunate that I got to hear it, and that the band got it together and recorded it. I get to see them live in July, and I can’t wait. I’m gushing, I know, and I’m sorry, but think of your favorite band, and now think of your favorite record by that band, and now imagine that they just released it, and you just heard it for the first time today. That’s how I’m feeling right now. O How the Mighty Have Fallen is right up there with the best Choir albums – it moves me more than I can tell you, takes root at the very core of my love of music. It makes me feel 16 again. It’s a beautiful, wonderful, good great gift, and I thank them for it.

I understand that the likelihood of anyone reading this liking Mighty as much as I do is very slim. I’ve been a Choir fan long enough to know that they’re not for everyone, and I’ve struck out numerous times while trying to turn people on to them. But as I said in an earlier review of their box set, you don’t share a band like the Choir to prove how musically learned you are, you share a band like the Choir because it would be a crime to keep them to yourself. The odds are small, but if you like this album even one-tenth as much as I do, it’s worth it to me, because that means you’ll like it a lot. Go here.

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A couple of quick ones before I go:

The new Garbage album is pretty bad, and I think it’s an unfortunate case of the culture catching up with a unique sound. The first Garbage album appeared in 1995, during the tail end of the grunge thing, and they presented a surprising alchemy – they utilized the processed guitars and industrial noise so prevalent at that time to augment fizzy pop songs. Garbage music had all the hallmarks of the alternative movement – the loud-soft guitars, the whirring electronic drums, the self-loathing lyrics, and the punky-cute goth girl singing them. Just ask the members of Curve – Garbage is often accused of stealing their sound whole, when in fact Butch Vig and company added classic songcraft and melody.

I tend to credit Vig with seeing the potential of this sound – after all, he helped start the whole grunge thing with his work on Nirvana’s Nevermind, which was more an exercise in mainstreaming than anything else. I can imagine him thinking, “If only Cobain were a little more pop, we could have something here…” I’m probably selling the other members of the band short, considering they all were known for their studio work before joining Garbage, and the sound of their first two records could only have been conjured up by seasoned producers.

The foursome gambled on their belief that people responded to the poppier elements of Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins, not the rawer ones, and they were right. They also had excellent timing, releasing their confections just as grunge was dying a slow death. Garbage was the bridge between the garage bands of the early ‘90s and the glossy pop of the late ‘90s. It was a delicate balance, and they pulled it off well.

But here’s the thing – their sound, once so singular, has now been co-opted by any pop producer looking to add an “edge.” Even American Idol Kelly Clarkson’s new single, “Since You’ve Been Gone,” could be a Garbage song, with its guitar tone honed to that just-loud-enough-to-almost-rock-but-not-enough-to-scare-soccer-moms radio sheen. It doesn’t matter that Garbage was 200 times better at such studio wizardry – their one trick is now everywhere, and it’s lost its power.

Granted, Garbage themselves have lost a little something, too. I think they felt the zeitgeist moving before recording 2001’s Beautifulgarbage, which went a little far in the pop direction, incorporating ‘50s-style balladry. I liked that record, but not quite as much as the first two. And now Bleed Like Me, the fourth album, veers a little too far back into the “rawk” arena, sacrificing melody and sweetness. The guitars are certainly more aggressive, and the drums more real, but the songs are only so-so, and some (“Bad Boyfriend,” the inexplicable single “Why Do You Love Me”) are terribly lame.

Shirley Manson’s endless self-destruction is becoming sad, as well, and I can’t tell if that’s a culture thing or just a by-product of me growing up. She even succumbs to a little hypocrisy here – on “Sex is Not the Enemy,” she leads a female empowerment brigade, singing, “I won’t feel guilty, no matter what they’re telling me, I won’t feel dirty and buy into their misery.” But she spends most of the rest of the album feeling guilty, dirty and miserable.

There are two songs on Bleed Like Me that are worth hearing. “It’s All Over But the Crying” breaks the fuzzy monotony for a classic ballad, one that would have occupied the closing slot on Garbage albums past. But this album ends with “Happy Home,” a six-minute wonder with a great riff and a wordless chorus. But that’s it. The rest tries hard to recapture the textured magic of the first two albums, and resoundingly fails over and over. Garbage used to sound like no one else around, and now they sound so ordinary, so average. I’m not sure that’s their fault, entirely, but there you go.

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The big question about Bill Mallonee’s Friendly Fire is, of course, is it worth the wait?

I ordered this album in October of last year, as it was at that time intended to ship right around Christmas. It showed up in my mailbox last week. For some, that would be an inexcusable delay, but for Mallonee, it’s becoming par for the course. This guy has had almost no luck at all during his career, and the hinted-at behind the scenes delays that kept Friendly Fire from his fans seem like just more bad fortune. The shame is, Mallonee’s music deserves a wider audience, especially from the alt-country side of the biz. If you’re listening, Lost Highway, here’s a guy you should sign…

Now that Mallonee’s gone back to his semi-acoustic Americana roots, that pairing seems even more appropriate. He broke from the Vigilantes of Love, his long-time cast of rotating backup musicians, in 2002, and in rapid succession released his first three solo albums. They’re all good, especially the first, Fetal Position, but they found Mallonee stretching his Brit-pop wings a bit, playing treated guitars and singing big choruses. Many of the songs (“Wintergreen,” “Life on Other Planets,” “Crescent Moon”) were among the best he’d ever written, but none had the power of his career’s inescapable apex, 1997’s Audible Sigh.

Then, with last year’s Dear Life, Mallonee pulled out the acoustic again and made a tender, sad songwriter album, in the vein of his earlier VoL work. The record didn’t hit me for a couple of weeks, but once it sank in, it became like an old friend. Happily, he’s continued in that vein for Friendly Fire, the best-sounding album of his solo career, but he’s added violins and mandolins and drums and sweet pedal steel. Honestly, this thing really belongs on Lost Highway, or some similar major-minor roots label.

So, is it worth the wait? Uh huh, oh yeah.

The album opens with its strongest song, “No Longer Bound,” but doesn’t let up – “Is That Too Much to Ask” is terrific, the title track (a story of a returned soldier) is heartbreaking, and “Of Future Partridge Families” is surprisingly jaunty. Throughout, Mallonee keeps a perfect balance between the deep American story-songs he’s so good at and the pop songs he’s getting so much better at. He stumbles a couple of times – “You Were the Only Girl for Me” is kind of simplistic, and closing hymn “Apple of Your Eye” could have been stronger – but overall, this is his most solid and satisfying solo record to date.

Of course, the focus of any Mallonee album is the lyrics, and he doesn’t disappoint on that front either. Friendly Fire is about redemption, mostly, but it’s also about love and weariness. For my money, there’s nothing more moving here (or on any of his solo records) than the title song. It’s subtitled “No More Fight Left in Me,” and it chronicles the post-war life of a soldier who got through combat by thinking of his beloved, only to find that the relationship is not what he hoped it would be: “Now she just slams the door whenever I try to hold her, like I held on for three nights at sea, I got no more fight in me…”

Bill Mallonee’s had a long career, and he’s spent almost all of it under the radar. That he’s still plugging away, still making records independently and playing for small yet appreciative crowds, is kind of amazing. I wouldn’t have nearly the fortitude he has – I’d have snagged a day job years ago, and given up. But Mallonee’s a songwriter, mining a vein, and I don’t think he has a choice. He keeps going because the songs keep coming. Every Mallonee album takes a few weeks to seep in, but once it does, each one becomes indispensable and treasured. Friendly Fire is a great starting point, his best album in years. Visit his website and check it out.

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Next week, Ben Folds.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m always on about little labels and little bands that show faith in each other. It’s been my position that the next best thing, in this internet-savvy new world, to putting your own stuff out there is to find a label run by music fans. I’m talking about the organizations that care more about the artistry than the sales figures – or rather, that see the artistry as the primary concern, believing that sales will follow if the music and packaging are done right. I’m talking about labels that stick with low-selling yet adored bands, letting them make the records they want to make and giving them the full benefit of their design and marketing expertise.

And when I’m talking about that, the name Tooth and Nail Records always pops into my head. Tooth and Nail is a group out of Washington that started a little more than 10 years ago, but in that time, they’ve developed the template for the modern artist-friendly independent record label. One thing that’s clear after their first decade – the Tooth and Nail team believes in developing artists, in standing by them and letting them evolve. But they also take great care of the unknowns, the new bands that sign to their family.

Here’s a look at one of each.

I first heard Starflyer 59 on, of all things, a tribute album to little-known satirist Steve Taylor. They did a track called “Sin for a Season,” originally a clean-guitar mood piece, in low tones and huge walls of distortion. Early Starflyer built such fortresses out of their guitars that they really didn’t sound like guitars at all, and the effect was like drowning in concrete. Their self-titled debut from 1994 was the third-ever release on Tooth and Nail, and Starflyer has stuck with the label ever since.

Starflyer 59 is the brainchild of Jason Martin, who one day will be recognized as the pop genius he undoubtedly is. When I reviewed Old, their 2003 album, I remarked that since each Starflyer album is so radically different from the last, each one is in some way their best album. Well, that still holds, but sit down, kids, because their just-released ninth record, Talking Voice Vs. Singing Voice, might just be their best album overall, by any criteria. It’s certainly a huge step up from both Old (which was borderline marvelous) and their last one, I Am the Portuguese Blues (which was not).

In fact, Portuguese Blues, a collection of new recordings of old songs, now seems like the stopgap it probably was. Talking Voice is the real deal, a massively melancholy affair full of Cure influences and gorgeous layers of beautiful sound. Martin produced it with Frank Lenz, the only other credited band member this time out, and he obviously learned his lessons working with the likes of Terry Taylor, Gene Eugene and Aaron Sprinkle. Sonically, I can’t think of a Starflyer album I like more than this one.

But how are the songs? Well, this should be no surprise to Starflyer fans, but they’re fantastic. Most of the tracks creep and crawl like spiders, spinning their eerie textures into dark webs. The opener, “The Contest Completed,” crashes in on a patented Martin guitar chime, an insistent bass line, and a sweeping, Disintegration-era Cure-style synth squall. The chorus is pure Martin, though, strengthened by the deep melancholy of his baritone voice. The obvious single, “Good Sons,” bops along delightfully, and smoothly eases into a chorus that won’t leave you alone.

You can spend days just listening to the sounds of this record. Martin and Lenz employed a string section, which Lenz arranged, and the violins and violas come to the fore on the great “A Lists Go On,” “Softness, Goodness” and “A Good Living.” Dig the trumpet on “Easy Street,” too. The Starflyer boys are just as imaginative with the tones when they’re working with just guitars, too – dig the chiming notes on “Something Evil,” or the slippery clean tones on “Night Life.”

This is an immaculately crafted album of superb songs, and in fact my only complaint with it is the same one I have every time Starflyer puts something out – it’s too short. Talking Voice is nine songs in 32 minutes, and I wanted more as soon as it was over. Martin is remarkably prolific – he’s released three albums and an EP in the last two years – but each of his projects is tiny. You could fit Talking Voice, Portuguese Blues and the Last Laurel EP all on one disc. This is a minor complaint, of course, since Martin doesn’t release any filler tracks. His 30-minute albums are all solid, and probably just the right length, in retrospect. I just want more of his work, is all.

As I said before, Starflyer has hung in there with Tooth and Nail since the beginning, and the label has stuck with them, seemingly letting Martin do pretty much whatever he wants. (They have a similar deal with his brother, Ronnie, the mastermind of long-running electronic pop act Joy Electric.) Nine albums, four EPs and a box set later, the arrangement obviously has worked out for both of them, and Starflyer’s first four releases are the subjects of the first Tooth and Nail remasters, slated for later this year. They are the label’s signature band, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they continue their partnership with Tooth and Nail until one of them calls it a day.

A new band could do a lot worse than signing on with a label that develops artists the way T&N has developed Starflyer. Just ask Virginia Beach quintet Mae – their second album, The Everglow, is the talk of their label’s website. It’s the follow-up to Destination: Beautiful, a left-field wonder full of hooks and surprising musicianship, and one of the most memorable modern rock records I’ve heard in ages.

I’m surprised at myself for being such a fan of this band, since I usually don’t buy into the pop/punk/emo thing, but Mae transcends those sorts of labels. You could hear them on the radio with the likes of Good Charlotte and Dashboard Confessional, but they have so much more going on musically than pretty much any other similar band I’ve heard. Part of the secret is that they’ve refused to go full-bore into any one aspect of their sound – they are pop/punk/emo/ambient/rock, and they don’t identify fully with any of those. They just write good songs, record them well with interesting arrangements, and leave the categories to the critics.

The Tooth and Nail design department knocked themselves out with The Everglow’s package – it’s designed like a children’s book, with illustrations and a slipcase. Everything about this album screams “major, serious work,” from the lovely cover art to the foil-embossed booklet, but luckily, the record itself is as much fun as Mae’s debut. The guitars are a bit louder, the songs are a bit longer, but overall, little has changed. The Everglow is another hook-packed collection of winners, with some surprising moments, and no bum tracks.

I admit to worrying a bit at the beginning. The “Prologue” is funny, but piano ballad “We’re So Far Away” is a little trite, and “Someone Else’s Arms” is more normal-rock than I’m used to from Mae. The new version of “Suspension” (it was originally on their b-sides record) de-emphasizes the kinetic lead guitar, too, which was my favorite part. But with track five, “This is the Countdown,” the album takes off and never looks back. That song features a killer chorus, a neat clean-guitar section, and a classic piano break. It’s a monster hit in the making.

From there, as The Everglow unspools, it just keeps building, vaulting from track to track as if the band can’t wait to show you what they’ve come up with. There’s no instant classic like “This Time is the Last Time” here, but overall, the record is deeper and better than its predecessor. “Painless” explodes with a prog-style piano figure and a stop-time chorus that takes a couple of listens to wrap your brain around. “Breakdown” marries pounding piano with a cool, unexpected bass line and an infectious “woah-oh” melody, but it’s the acoustic guitar midsection that packs the punch. And “Mistakes We Knew We Were Making” (a nifty Dave Eggers reference) gets my vote for best track, with its odd time signature and subtle yet lovely percussion.

The album concludes with another inescapable pop song (“Anything”) and a seven-minute float-a-thon (“The Sun and the Moon”) unlike anything they’ve tried. But they pull it off, all pianos and harmonies, capping a wide-eyed, romantic album that cements Mae’s rep as a band to watch. If you don’t like anything that sounds like MTV, then Mae might not be for you, but if you love to hear the potential in a style (or four) really explored by quality musicians, then try this. The Everglow is one of my favorite records of the year so far, energetic and bright and hooky and just plain good. This should be on every modern rock station in the country.

Both the Starflyer and Mae records are testaments to what artists can do in supportive environments, when they are left to follow their own visions. On many other labels, Starflyer might have been shown the door years ago, and Mae might have been “asked” to pick one demographic and stick with it. Tooth and Nail sees the artistic value in records like these, and they’ve earned my respect and support. I may not like everything they do, but I love them for doing it the way they do.

End love letter. Special thanks to Jim Worthen for hooking me on Mae. Next week, Bill Mallonee and/or Garbage. After that, Ben Folds, Eels, Aimee Mann, Ryan Adams, and the Choir.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I hate Pennsylvania.

Apologies to any faithful readers who happen to live in the Keystone State, but I hate it. I have a good reason, though – Pennsylvania hated me first.

This enmity started about seven years ago, when my friend Ray and I were stranded for almost a week in Clearfield, a tiny town in the middle of central nowhere, PA. A truck we were following on the highway dropped its spare tire from underneath, landing it right in the path of my newly purchased (and dangerously low to the ground) Saturn sport coupe. With a ditch to the left of me and traffic to the right, I saw little choice but to go over the obstacle and hope no serious damage would be done. A couple of inches either way and I could have flipped the car.

So we went over the tire, and immediately the car started acting up. We pulled over, called Triple A, and they sent a down-home guy with strange facial hair named Shawn. And Shawn assured us that our problem was a cracked oil pan, and that we’d be on the road in a few hours. We were breathing sighs of relief, when Shawn made one last trip around the car, stopped short, stared at the engine – and if I could mark one part of this story “And Here My Troubles Began,” it would be this one – and exclaimed, “Holy shit!”

And then he said it again.

This did not sound like a happy diagnosis. Apparently, the tire had cracked my engine block, rendering it scrap. I needed a new one, stat. Luckily, Shawn had just that week discovered “this thing called internet,” and he ordered an engine post haste. Here’s the thing, though – Shawn happily gave us a ride to a nearby hotel, where the receptionist knew his name, and all but said, “Got another one, huh?” I got the definite sense that the two of them had done this before, and the hotel pretty much had a room reserved for whatever strays Shawn picked up off the road.

And soon the entire conspiracy became clear. It was the state, you see, the whole state of Pennsylvania. They trap people and force them to spend money at local businesses – trucks in Pennsylvania drop tires regularly so that folks like Shawn and the hotel owners can rake in some out-of-state bucks. I was there for four days – Ray abandoned me after two, citing unimportant things like “work” and “family” and “my own life” he had to get back to. (I often asked him what he would have done in my place in that situation, and without fail, his response was always, “My Jeep would have cleared the tire.” Har dee har.)

I’ll give Shawn this much, he did great work. I was a bit apprehensive when I first saw the backwoods automobile graveyard he called his shop, and spotted my car in 30 pieces in his garage, but his repair job was top notch. I had thousands of further problems with that little car, some of which bordered on science fiction, but none of them had anything to do with the engine, or with Shawn’s work.

Anyway, since then, I have been wary of Pennsylvania, and every time I have made a cross-country trip, either across the northeast or up from the southern coast, I have designed the route to avoid as much of the offending state as I can. Sadly, it’s a pretty big state, and avoiding it entirely often involves air travel, so I’ve had to grit my teeth and get through it several times. The first time I managed an in-and-out without incident, I waited until I was safely over the New York border, then I flipped off Pennsylvania, shouting exultantly, “You didn’t get me this time, fuckers!” It was a good moment.

So I told you that story to tell you this one.

I’m sick as that sex-change episode of South Park right now, coughing and wheezing and breathing slowly, lest my chest burst with pain. Let me tell you how I got this way.

I drove out east for Easter, taking I-90 for the full 16.5 hours, and I stayed a week and a half. Had a great time – saw some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, got Easter candy from three different sources (despite being 30), and got the latest installment of the book my uncle’s writing about his time in World War II. I saw Sin City, and it was pretty much perfect. All in all, good vacation. I even spent an extra day to avoid the bad weather predicted for the weekend, deciding to make the trek back on Sunday, April 3. Not a problem.

I got through Massachusetts and half of New York okay, and then I hit some freak snowstorm, one the Weather Channel apparently missed. I almost died in New York when the car skidded out and pulled a complete 360 in the middle of I-90. I swear I was facing the oncoming traffic for a good three seconds, unable to get out of the way. Luckily, the car righted itself and landed off the road, and after I was done being terrified, I told myself that I was fortunate that hadn’t happened in Pennsylvania. I’d be dead for sure.

I forged onward at 30 miles per hour, passing up several opportunities to get off the road and get a hotel or something, and then it started to clear up. The clouds parted, the snow started letting up, and I figured I’d be okay. I must have forgotten that, geographically speaking, I was just about to enter the third ring of Hell. Almost three minutes after I crossed over into Pennsylvania, traffic ground to a halt. Miles of it, not moving at all.

Well, I waited an hour or so, then shut the car down to conserve the quarter-tank of gas I had left. Venturing from the warm confines of my Focus into the snowy forest of immobile autos, I found some truck drivers who knew what was going on. Pennsylvania had closed I-90. Yep, the whole road, and just in that one state. What they planned to do with the people already stuck on I-90, no one knew. I got back in my car and froze some more.

Five hours. That’s how long we were sitting there, shivering and waiting for rescue. Five hours. When the Keystone Cops finally arrived, they muscled their way up through miles of unmovable traffic, then shepherded us to the next exit. Something we could have done, of course, by ourselves, five hours before. Tired and nearly sick as I was, there was no way I was going to stay in Pennsylvania overnight – who knew what could happen? My car would undoubtedly have been stolen, stripped and sold, and I would have had to pay some PA taxi driver $500 to get me to the airport. That’s how they make their money in PA – by trapping unsuspecting motorists.

No, I wasn’t about to do that, so I found Route 20 and drove west until I saw the greatest thing I’d ever witnessed – the “Welcome to Ohio” sign. Only then did I pull off the road and find a hotel. I didn’t spend any money in Pennsylvania, but they got me anyway. Those five frigid hours did a number on me – I have a kickass immune system, and I’m hardly ever sick, but right now I feel like I can’t breathe, and any rapid movement makes my lungs hurt. So congratulations, Pennsylvania, you screwed me again.

Oh, how I hate you.

* * * * *

At least the drive gave me plenty of opportunity to listen to new music. Here are my thoughts on two of the first really good records of 2005:

In retrospect, Glen Phillips always kind of belonged on Lost Highway Records. There’s always been a bit of twang to his folk and rock style, and his band Toad the Wet Sprocket was always a much more serious and introspective group than its name would imply. I’m not sure why it’s taken Phillips this long to hook up with Lost Highway, the home of Ryan Adams and Elvis Costello’s The Delivery Man, but now that he has, it’s an obvious pairing. He fits right in.

Phillips’ solo debut, 2001’s Abulum, emphasized the folksiness and lyrical poetry in his sound. It made my Top 10 List that year on the strength of its lyrics, one of the best sets of words I’d heard in ages, so much so that the sweet acoustic pop songcraft was just icing. His sophomore record, Winter Pays for Summer, isn’t quite as immediately striking lyrically, but Phillips makes up for that with his strongest group of songs since Toad’s Dulcinea. Some of this record is deceptively simple, but given a few listens, all of it sounds just about right.

The opening two tracks sound like Toad reborn. “Duck and Cover” is a wonderful number, full of the family-oriented sentiments that modern country strives for, yet always bungles. There’s nothing saccharine about Phillips’ words here – “One way or another, we all need each other, nothing’s gonna turn out the way you thought it would, friends and lovers don’t you duck and cover, ‘cause everything turns out the way it should.” It’s realistically optimistic, if such a thing is possible, and the music is somehow the same. It’s just a great little song.

“Thankful,” the first single, is even better, with its driving rhythm and unpredictable shifts. It’s the one moment on Winter Pays for Summer that might be considered power pop, but Phillips grounds it with his sweet voice and words. “Thankful,” like many songs here, features former Jellyfish singer Andy Sturmer on backing vocals, and while you can’t quite pick him out, I’d like to think that his influence has punched up these tunes.

It’s not all happiness and light, of course. Phillips brings the emotional ache on “Released,” a perhaps metaphorical tale of incarceration on which he sings, “My cup’s one-sixteenth full, I’m getting there but the getting’s slow.” He takes the seemingly simple rhythms and chords of “Cleareyed” and spins a joyous shout of it, and makes the similarly uncomplicated “Simple” seem revelatory. The album stumbles only once, with the too-easy “True.” Lyrically, it explores honesty and fidelity, the two sides of the title word, but musically it feels like a b-side.

But that’s the only dead spot. As late as track 10 (“Finally Fading”), Phillips is still pulling out the melodic winners, and no matter how close he seems to steer towards AOR-land, he never crosses that city’s limits. The closing track is an ode to contentment called “Don’t Need Anything,” and as trite as it may read on paper – “I’ve a roof overhead, the stars if I choose, but I’ve got no itch to fly, got no need to move” – he sells it on disc, singing over a sparse piano bed.

Winter Pays for Summer is perhaps Phillips’ most honest record, and he sounds genuinely happy and at peace. That the album is still moving and engaging despite its lack of bite is a testament to his skill. Phillips, in fact, describes his own album best with a few of his song titles: it’s mostly clear-eyed, simple and thankful. And it’s a treat to listen to.

* * * * *

The great Over the Rhine has made a similarly simple record with their new Drunkard’s Prayer, but under vastly different circumstances.

Over the Rhine is a married couple, pianist Linford Detweiler and singer Karin Bergquist, and in 2003 they made a massive, two-disc opus-a-rama called Ohio. It was the culmination of a trip they’d been on for a while, taking their tiny little sound and exploding it with musicians and layers of production. Sure, it was still smaller than most anything else you’d find at the record store, but for Karin and Linford, Ohio was an untamed, unwieldy beast that they somehow tamed and wielded. It was the best album they had yet made.

The tour, on the other hand, nearly drove them apart. Ohio was such a lumbering undertaking that they were feeling the strain on their marriage, so rather than keep pushing forward, they cancelled the tour and went home to reconnect. They made a deal – they would open one bottle of wine a night and talk until it was empty. And they would make a little record in their living room, one made up of simple songs and genuine feeling, scrubbed clean.

It’s a wonderful story, and you know what? It’s a wonderful record, too. Drunkard’s Prayer is almost entirely acoustic guitar, piano, upright bass and Bergquist’s striking voice. There are drums on only three of these 11 tracks, and even those are subtle. This album is the sound of Karin and Linford opening the doors to their home and inviting you in. It’s so warm and intimate that I don’t even feel odd about using their first names.

This is an album about reconnecting, about mending relationships, and it bursts with real longing and pain. It opens with its simplest declaration, “I Want You to Be My Love.” The title phrase makes up 80 percent of the lyrics, and it’s this commitment right from the beginning that provides this record’s center. You will not hear a more lovely song this year than “Born,” a six-minute honeydrip that seems to glide by like something half its length. “I was born to love, I’m gonna learn to love without fear,” Karin sings, and to say that you can feel her conviction here is to understate by miles.

Drunkard’s Prayer never “takes off,” in the traditional sense, although it seems like it might when “Spark” kicks in. The duo brings it back down with “Hush Now,” a lovely piano-vocal number, and then takes it up one last time with “Lookin’ Forward,” the obvious single. From there, though, they close the album with four sweet ballads, perhaps the finest sustained run in their catalog. “Little Did I Know” expands its jazzy tone with a lengthy saxophone solo (by Brent Gallaher), while “Who Will Guard the Door” sets its tale of love and loss over an acoustic guitar web reminiscent of Ohio’s “Suitcase.”

“Firefly” levitates on Detweiler’s piano and David Henry’s cello, letting Bergquist dig deep into the minor key melody. This would be her finest moment on Drunkard’s Prayer, if not for the closing track, a cover of Rogers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine.” Over just piano and upright bass, Karin brings gorgeous depth to the familiar tune – she’s obviously very good, but until I heard this rendition, I had no idea of just how good she is. She weaves this song’s take on odd yet perfect relationships into the very fabric of the album, and it’s a wonder to behold.

According to the liner notes, the duo picked Drunkard’s Prayer as their album title because it sounds like the name of a race horse, “a long shot, a horse with little chance of winning, but one you’ve got all your money on.” If there’s a better metaphor for any long-term relationship, I’ve yet to hear it. Drunkard’s Prayer is not the way any label rep would have advised Over the Rhine to follow up Ohio, but as you can hear in every note, every line, every deep pocket of this record, it’s exactly the one they needed to make. This album may have saved their marriage, and there’s an honest and palpable beauty to it that can only come from such depth of meaning and feeling. It is, once again, the best album they’ve done.

* * * * *

Quick notes: The new Weezer song is so bad that I don’t know whether to laugh or find Rivers Cuomo and shoot him. It makes me very sad. The new Nine Inch Nails is similarly execrable. In brighter news, Aimee Mann has released her whole new album, three songs at a time, on her website, and it’s very, very good. And if I see another four-to-five-star review of the new Eels record, the 33-song Blinking Lights and Other Revelations, I may go out of my mind waiting for April 26. The songs released on the band’s web site are excellent.

The current front runner in my search for my favorite album title this year is the Lost Dogs. You may remember that they made an album of re-recordings last year called Mutt. Well, they’re currently recording the second installment in that series, and the title they’ve chosen is perfect: Jeff. I bet you just laughed out loud reading that right now. That’s the one to beat, though no one else has quite stepped up to the plate yet. The closest second place contender is The Wonder Stuff, with Escape from Rubbish Island. But it’s early yet.

Next week, I hopefully will stop coughing. I’ll also be reviewing two discs from Tooth and Nail Records – Starflyer 59’s Talking Voice vs. Singing Voice and Mae’s The Everglow.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The first Crowded House song I ever heard wasn’t one of their ubiquitous singles, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Something So Strong.” Rather, it was a live slam-through of “World Where You Live,” the opening track on their excellent 1986 debut album. The trio performed the song on MTV, for some reason, and it must have been after at least one of those singles hit big, but I vividly remember “World Where You Live” as my introduction. I especially remember the pounding, inescapable drum beat – for a while after I heard it, that’s pretty much all I remembered about it.

Of course, I was 12 at the time, and didn’t know much about music. Very few of my favorite bands during that time have traveled with me into adulthood, but with Crowded House, I somehow stumbled upon something magical. Neil Finn remains one of my favorite songwriters, and I have journeyed back and forth through his catalog, picking up his work with Split Enz and breathlessly awaiting his solo projects. Still, the four Crowded House albums have a special place in my heart, one that I don’t think either Finn brother will ever replace. And it all started for me with that thunderous drum beat on MTV.

Now I hear that Paul Hester, the author of that beat, is dead, the latest in an apparent string of suicides. Hester handled the drums in Split Enz as well, so if you’ve ever found yourself grooving to their powerhouse hit “I See Red,” well, it was at least half his doing. I don’t have much to say about Hester’s death, but I just wanted to acknowledge it here, since his band made such an impression on a much younger me. Crowded House was something of a gateway drug to other quality music for me, including the Beatles, so I owe them.

Rest in peace, Paul.

* * * * *

I think it’s about time we gave up looking for the “real” Beck.

Since he first cut-and-pasted his way onto the scene with his 1994 smash “Loser,” Beck has been confounding those listeners who like to develop personal connections with artists. Thirteen years later, he’s crafted a catalog that’s as extensive as it is inscrutable, and it’s about time we all realize that this is as open as he’s likely to ever be. His ironic demeanor even cast doubt upon 2002’s Sea Change, a glorious acoustic record that may have been sincere, but could just as easily have been another pastiche. All we seem to know about Beck Hansen at this point is that he loves 5,000 different types of music, and often likes playing them all at once.

Even comparing him to David Bowie doesn’t quite work, although it’s done all the time. Beck takes his musical chameleon style from Bowie, certainly, but where Bowie created characters and staged grand science fiction plays to couch his insights, Beck remains oddly straightforward. Difficult as it may seem to grasp, I’m coming around to the idea that the Cuisinart master who made Odelay, the white boy funker who shimmied through Midnite Vultures and the dust bowl folkie who spun One Foot in the Grave are all the same guy, just being himself. They’re all the “real” Beck.

After eight albums of insane musical variety, the element of surprise is all but gone from a new Beck album. It’s almost the opposite of the AC/DC effect – Angs Young will always sound the same, and Beck will always sound like somebody new each time out. Guero, his just-released ninth record, follows that tradition. Forget all that jive you’re reading about it being a “classic” Beck album. There’s no such thing. If anything, Guero takes some of Beck’s previous styles and combines them in interesting ways, but for the most part, it sounds like the work of a completely new artist again.

The title is apparently a Spanish slang word for “white boy,” but the Latin quotient is only amped up on “Que Onda Guero,” an atmospheric rap tune that doubles as a stroll through the barrio. Elsewhere, Beck has brought his blues influence to the table, creating perhaps his most Robert Johnson-inspired record. The slide acoustics of “Loser” are back, married to beats courtesy of the Dust Brothers, but even bluesier and less poppy.

In fact, this album is surprisingly somber and subdued. It’s very much like the brokenhearted Beck of Sea Change drove down to Louisiana and tried to make Odelay. For a while, the beats and samples try to cheer him up, as on the opener (and first single) “E-Pro” and the super-poppy “Girl,” but after the first few tracks, the Brothers kind of sit back and let Beck drive the bus down to the Delta. “Missing” includes the arresting string lines that made Sea Change so riveting, “Broken Drum” levitates on lovely piano, and “Farewell Ride” sounds almost like it would fall over if it tried to stand up, so wavery is its blues. One gets the sense that a track like “Hell Yes” is only here because that’s what’s expected of an upbeat Beck album, and his heart isn’t really in it.

The patchwork effect Beck pioneered on Mellow Gold and Odelay is still in evidence, but toned down and in service to the songs. (Check out Petra Haden’s quick vocal cameo on “Rental Car,” a late-album rocker.) But Guero contains virtually none of the giddy joy of those records. Lyrically, Beck is still in a desperate space, and the album is full of references to death and despair. “I prayed heaven today would bring its hammer down on me and pound you out of my head,” he moans at the start of “Missing,” and later, on the great “Earthquake Weather,” he mutters, “The days go slow into a void we’ve filled with death.” Closer “Emergency Exit” might be his most depressing song, with its images of landfill graves and scarecrow shadows.

As someone who appreciates Odelay but loves Sea Change, I think this dark undercurrent only strengthens the record. Guero contains its share of formless filler, like “Black Tambourine” and “Hell Yes,” but it also sports some of his finest songs, and the top-notch production keeps things busy, yet simultaneously sparse, in an odd way. It sounds like nothing else he’s done, and yet serves as a mature summation of where he’s been. Of course, there’s no point in trying to guess where Beck Hansen will go next, but if the depth of Guero is any indication, he’s done with the sound-for-sound’s-sake phase of his career, and the resultant sophistication bodes well for whichever musical path he decides to take.

Of course, he could just as easily make a record full of Mariachi nursery rhymes. He’s just like that.

* * * * *

I am writing this at my friend Ray’s house, two days from the end of my Easter vacation, so I need to thank him and his family for the use of the computer and ‘net connection that made this column possible. I plan to drive back to Illinois on Saturday, just in time for the Red Sox’ opening day on Sunday. (David Wells? What the hell…?)

Next week, Glen Phillips and/or Over the Rhine.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I don’t think I’m ever going to understand Moby.

He is, as I’ve said before, the unlikeliest of superstars – tiny, well-read, articulate and gentle, the very antithesis of the modern celebrity. In a pop music world built on bravado and vulgarity, Moby has crafted an odd little career out of thoughtfulness and borderline timidity. It’s strange to think that at one time, he was controversial for including pictures of himself on the covers of his techno/mix albums, because if there’s one thing you can’t accuse Moby of, it’s an excess of personality.

Musically, his career can be evenly divided. In the early ‘90s, he made blissful techno and ambient chill-out music, scoring club hits with his reworkings of themes from James Bond movies and Twin Peaks. He proved his ambitions with Everything is Wrong, his spectacular major-label full-length debut, in 1995. I’m always in favor of records that smash boundaries, and this one set fire to them, placing raves, punk freak-outs and pulsing ambient pieces right next to each other and watching them fight it out. He followed it up with the horrible, guitar-drenched Animal Rights, but we can forgive that.

And then he developed a pretty cool trick – he cast old soul songs in new settings on 1999’s Play, adding a depth and spirituality to his work that he’d only hinted at before. Play was a trip, but over time, the non-sampled tracks (like the I-can’t-believe-it-was-a-hit atrocity “South Side”) wore thinner than Moby’s voice. Play was roughly one-third sampled soul updates, one-third ambient instrumentals, and one-third bland vocal tracks with amateur hour lyrics.

That balance worked for millions of people, though, because Play stayed on the pop charts for two years, spun off countless singles and commercial spots, and still probably brings in a check each month for its author. Oh, and the album’s popularity has all but obliterated the second half of Moby’s career – His Timidness has been seemingly frightened of messing with a successful formula. For the past five years, he’s made nothing but clones of Play – its follow-up, 18, was exactly the same, as were the two collections of b-sides. I got so tired of waiting for him to break new ground that I even lapped up Baby Monkey, his album of ambient tracks under the name Voodoo Child, even though it sounded just like his pre-Everything is Wrong material.

Given six years and four discs of sameness, you would think that Hotel, his just-released 12th collection, would be cause for celebration. Moby has chucked the sampler, plugged in the guitar and made a record of pop songs, something he’s never done before. He’s finally loosed the Play albatross from around his neck and started fresh. I would give him credit for his boldness, if he weren’t doing it as a response to years of diminishing returns.

And for a while there, Hotel will make you think he’s made a good choice. It kicks off with the most interesting four-song stretch he’s produced since Play – the piano-pounding “Raining Again” is memorable and melodic, “Beautiful” makes great use of those fully integrated guitars, first single “Lift Me Up” is a kind of low-key powerhouse, and “Where You End” is an engaging stomper. These songs are so un-Moby-like that one can forgive his shaky vocals and his moon-june-spoon lyrics. Just listen to the “la-la-la” refrain intertwining with the nifty guitar work on “Lift Me Up.” This is the finest work Moby has released under his own name in ages.

And then… well, he gives us a limp cover of New Order’s “Temptation,” sung by Laura Dawn, and it’s a momentum killer. After that, the album dies a slow, twitching death, like a fish caught on dry land. He never switches styles – the rest of the album is varying degrees of pop, all with vocals, except the closing synth instrumental. It’s just that he runs out of melodies, and tracks 7-13 are boring and forgettable, when they’re not laughable. The thing about Moby’s music is that it’s all on the surface – if you don’t hear something engaging on first or second listen, then repeated dives through are not going to help. There’s nothing else there.

Two things hamper this record even more than the lack of interesting songs in the second half, and I’ve already touched on them both. The first is Moby’s voice, which is wavery and weak, as always. Fair play to him for stepping out and singing so many songs on Hotel, but unlike Animal Rights (his other big vocal foray), the rest of this album is so clear and well-produced that his off-key moments stand out more prominently. Moby would probably say that his voice adds a human element to his music, and in a way, he’s right, but there are a whole lot of humans with voices that would fit this material better.

But that’s not even a big deal. The most disastrous element of this record is Moby’s lyrics. For most of Hotel’s running time, you’ll think you’re listening to dramatic readings from some seventh grader’s diary. Check this bit from “Love Should,” which sounds like a middle-schooler’s first romantic ballad: “Morning sun is sweet and soft on your eyes, oh my love, you always leave me surprised, before my heart starts to burst with all my love for you…” On “Dream About Me,” he gets this out without laughing: “Tell me no truth if it hurts bad, there’s enough in my life to make me so sad…”

I have to make special mention of “I Like It,” easily the worst song Moby has ever foisted upon the public. It’s four minutes of breathy sex play over a sparse groove that’s probably supposed to sound like Massive Attack, but falls short. The lyrics are basically “I like it, I like it a lot,” repeated in a pseudo-seductive tone that just doesn’t work. It’s embarrassing, and worthy of mockery. Oh, and it sucks, too.

Moby does pull out a late-game near-winner with “Slipping Away,” full of anthemic guitar, but it’s too little, too late. (And even that one suffers because of its lyrics: “Open to everything happy and sad, seeing the good when it’s all going bad…”) The record sputters to a close with “Forever,” a two-chord exercise in lameness, and “Homeward Angel,” a somewhat typical instrumental. The second half was so bad that it made me return to the first few tracks, just to see if they were still all that. (They are.)

The saving grace of this album is its second disc, unimaginatively titled Hotel Ambient. It is exactly as advertised – 68 minutes of blissful chill-out music, the kind you can find on Moby’s earlier records. (Especially the 1993 collection called – what else? – Ambient.) Naturally, this disc on its own won’t get Moby’s face on VH-1 and sell in the millions, so it’s relegated to bonus disc status, when in fact it’s better and more imaginative than the album it accompanies. It’s hard to recommend buying Hotel just for this second disc, although if you do the math, Moby’s given us two hours of music here, and about 80 minutes of it is worthwhile, especially if you like his more ambient work.

I’m just waiting for another album that Moby really likes. Since he hit big with Play, he’s had to worry about sales and singles and videos and big tours, and I’d like to hear a new album under his own name that disregards all those things. There are definitely hits on Hotel, and he’s crafted much of it to appeal to a wider audience, so there’s very little character and personality in evidence. In some ways, I even prefer Animal Rights to his post-Play output, because at least with that album you can tell he was making the music he most wanted to make. Everything since Play has been run through the Bland-O-Matic, and we’re left with Voodoo Child albums and bonus discs if we want to hear the real Moby. Hotel sounds great, and will probably do very well, but very little of the album proper can stand with Moby’s best work.

* * * * *

I am headed to the east coast for the Easter holiday, and I plan to spend about a week there. I’m telling you this just in case I don’t get a column up in time, although I will try to write and post one while I’m in Massachusetts. Next week sees new ones by Glen Phillips, Beck and Over the Rhine, and after two weeks of disappointment, I’m ready to hear something I love again. Hopefully one of those will fit the bill.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The coming months are reason enough to go on living. We have new records from the likes of Moby, Strapping Young Lad, Over the Rhine, Beck, Glen Phillips, Amy Ray, Starflyer 59, Garbage, The Choir, Eels, Ben Folds, Porcupine Tree, Aimee Mann, Ryan Adams, Nine Inch Nails, Dave Matthews Band, Robert Plant and Spoon. And we get the last ever Star Wars movie. I saw the new trailer, and I have to say that my inner six-year-old had a geek orgasm. And he doesn’t even know what an orgasm is yet.

Anyway, for an art and culture junkie like me, life is going to be sweet.

But all that starts next week, and this week I have to make do with a few albums I like, but don’t love. Yes, it’s the dreaded return of the Little Reviews of Mediocre Records Filler Column. I’ll try not to bore you too much.

* * * * *

Up until two years ago, to say that Adam Schlesinger was “best known” for anything was kind of laughable. He had his fans, but still his most widely disseminated work was his theme song for The Howard Stern Show.

All that changed in 2003 with a little ditty called “Stacy’s Mom.” Thousands of CD sales and a couple of Grammy nominations later, Schlesinger is now “best known” for his band Fountains of Wayne, which he masterminds with fellow songwriter Chris Collingwood. Their ’03 album, Welcome Interstate Managers, was not only wildly popular, but also very good – the closest I have heard to pop perfection since the heyday of Jellyfish.

But Fountains fans know that for more than a decade, Schlesinger has been pulling double duty. It would be tempting to call his other band, Ivy, a side project or a moonlighting gig, but it just ain’t true. For one thing, Ivy came first, releasing their debut EP Lately in 1994, but for another, it’s just obvious that Schlesinger is equally committed to both bands. My guess is that the two gigs fulfill disparate sides of his musical personality, because they’re quite different.

As varied as my musical taste is, I have to admit that I like Fountains better, but that’s because they press the classic pop buttons so brilliantly. Ivy is a different beast altogether, sweet and supple and often dreamlike in its textures. Their sixth album, In the Clear, goes even further in the float music direction, with simpler songs and more ringing tones than before. It’s nice and pleasant, but it kind of drifts by without leaving much mark.

Parisian-born singer Dominique Durand has emphasized the breathier aspects of her voice here, which fits in with the Euro-pop of tracks like “I’ve Got You Memorized,” but just wafts above lighter fare like “Clear My Head.” The record is immaculately produced, with layers of pianos and synths atop subtle guitars – it sounds beautiful, it’s just insubstantial. Even a delightful little pop song like “Tess Don’t Tell” doesn’t stick. The record sounds coated in Teflon.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a bad album, just a forgettable one. As with most Ivy records, more time was spent on the sound than on the substance, and it sounds great. Durand’s lovely backing vocals on “Ocean City Girl” are a treat, for instance, and the synths that cover these songs caress without drowning them. It’s a good production. I just wish it were a better group of songs, but that’s never been Ivy’s strong suit. It’s interesting that with his other band, Schlesinger plays with styles that most people dismiss as disposable, but Fountains always makes more of an impression than Ivy’s classy art-pop does.

* * * * *

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Eric Matthews.

In 1995, he was poised to be another Pop Genius-Slash-Savior, one who would lead us out of the clutches of mopey Seattle rock with his Beatlesque songwriting and baroque chamber-style arrangements. His big hit, “Fanfare,” was described as the “Penny Lane” of the ‘90s, and while I’d bet that most of you reading this couldn’t hum it on cue, you’d probably recognize the signature trumpet line if you heard it. Matthews’ ’95 debut album, It’s Heavy in Here, was a kind of low-key terrific that just didn’t make the radio in the Whiny Decade.

One more album followed in 1997 (the slightly less terrific The Lateness of the Hour), and then nothing. I scrawled Matthews’ name down on my ever-growing list of lost artists, made a note to keep an eye out for his work in the future, and thought no more about it. But surprise! Matthews is back, eight years later, with a new disc called Six Kinds of Passion Looking for an Exit, on little Empyrean Records. If I hadn’t been looking for this, however unconsciously, I never would have found it.

But find it I did, and unfortunately, it’s less a grand return and more an earnest curiosity. The most obvious issue is its brevity – the title is almost longer than the record, with its seven songs in 33 minutes. Additionally, this is more of a well-produced demo than a new album. Matthews played almost all of the instruments, and the result is much more stripped-down and confessional than his first two efforts. This is not an immediately rewarding collection. The songs take some digging into.

The layers of production on his first two albums also masked Matthews’ vocal shortcomings, but there’s no hiding them here – his breathy tenor wavers on occasion, especially on the harmonized backing vocal tracks. His songwriting remains strong, but less instantly memorable, too – only “Do You Really Want It,” with its up-and-down chorus, hits on first listen, but its cheesy computer drums and bass make it sound like more of a sketch than a finished piece.

The rest is deep and meandering, like the hushed “You Will Be Happy,” which finds Matthews reaching for that high falsetto and nailing it most of the time. “Underground Song” is similarly quiet and acoustic, and contains a melody line strangely reminiscent of the Rascals hit “How Can I Be Sure.” The apologetic “Cardinal is More,” addressed to his former collaborator Richard Davies, is the record’s emotional high point, and I give Matthews credit for stretching his range. He closes with a “Fanfare”-esque, brassy Beatles homage, “Black to Light Brown,” that’s so brief and abrupt that it sounds unfinished.

Six Kinds of Passion is either an epilogue to his career, or a prologue to its second phase. It’s much less an entity of its own, which means that the value of tracking it down is in direct proportion to your love of Matthews’ first two albums. I liked them a lot, and I hope he makes more of them, but after eight years, Six Kinds of Passion is vaguely disappointing.

* * * * *

My friend Lee was all excited last time I reviewed a children’s album, and since that was three years ago, I think it’s about time I spun another.

Of course, the only reason I reviewed a kids’ record at all is that it was by They Might Be Giants, one of the silliest and most underrated pop bands around. They called it No!, and even though it was aimed at youngsters, it could easily have been just another TMBG album, so witty and well-crafted was it. It seems that John and John are going to make a second career out of this kiddie-pop thing, because now we have their second collection of educational fun, Here Come the ABCs.

This one is just slightly less wonderful than No!, for a couple of reasons. First, its subject matter is confined to the alphabet – these are all songs about letters and words. Second, it seems like this set is more dependent on its visual component, available in a separate DVD. Something like “Letter/Not a Letter” is obviously interactive, and the CD doesn’t quite deliver the whole picture.

But you’ll notice I said it’s “just slightly” less wonderful. This is great stuff, loaded with songs (23 of them) that slide right in to the TMBG catalog. “E Eats Everything” is funky and bouncy, “Flying V” is another one of those tricky pop songs that John Linnell pulls off so effortlessly, and “Pictures of Pandas Painting” is so cool it could have been on The Spine. (What are the pandas painting? Why, penguins, of course…)

This is educational music that doesn’t insult the intelligence, which is a rare thing. “Go for G,” for example, points out that G is for glue and grapes, but also for gyroscopes, which should send your average four-year-old to the dictionary. This is the kind of album on which D and W have a conversation about why D hasn’t been around much – “I got this new television set. I like to watch the sports.” It’s the kind of album which poses the philosophical question, “Who Put the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order?” In short, it’s exactly the kind of children’s album I would want to play for my kids, should I ever have any.

I can’t forget to mention my favorite thing here, “I C U.” John and John managed to find a way to write a sad love song, in which the lyrics are nothing but letters. Picture it – a dingy country bar, with twangy music playing from the broken-down jukebox in the corner. Two divorcees meet, and one says to the other, in a weepy drawl, “I M N X, N U R N X, N I C U, N U R O K.”

I hope TMBG keeps this up, because as I said when I reviewed No!, the field of children’s music could use a regular infusion of intelligence and wit. Here Come the ABCs is clever, it’s fun, and it’s delightful for all ages. If the kids of today remember this stuff in the same way my generation remembers Schoolhouse Rock, then I will be a happy man.

* * * * *

The cover of the new Choir album is beautiful. Go here and take a look.

Next week, Moby.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I just got back from seeing two horrible movies.

The Jacket, with Adrien Brody and Kiera Knightley, is a stupid, convoluted mess, strung together by hacks who have somehow deluded themselves into thinking they have something to say. The ending is all heart, which should make up for a lot, but doesn’t. The plot contortions are so great that accepting them is nearly impossible, so when you get to the conclusion, things are happening solely because the script needs them to. I was excited to see this partially because Fish has a cameo, but his role is so small it’s almost invisible.

And Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty, is a snoozer. You can tell where certain things are supposed to be funny, but nothing clicks. It’s a shame, because Chili Palmer is a great character, and he’s wasted in this flimsy, inflatable sell-out of a script. When you have John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel and Vince Vaughn in your cast and they’re all out-acted by The Rock, then something’s wrong. The film is not Aerosmith’s finest hour, either.

We just escaped 2004, a horrible year for movies, and now 2005 doesn’t seem to be shaping up any better. I’m looking forward to A Scanner Darkly, Melinda and Melinda, Elizabethtown, Serenity and…um, yeah. My inner six-year-old is psyched for Star Wars, too, but that’s about it. Last year I fell in love with only three movies – Before Sunset, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the great Sideways. I also enjoyed the heck out of The Life Aquatic, I Heart Huckabees, Team America and Shaun of the Dead, and admired the skill behind Million Dollar Baby and Garden State. I argued the merits of Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ, but don’t need to see either one again. The second half of Kill Bill was cool, too.

Everything else, probably 40 or so other movies I sat through, I’ve already forgotten.

It’s strange, though, that while movies have taken a nose dive, television seems to be finally waking up. I’m a freelancer these days, which means I have plenty of time to suck my brain dry with prolonged exposure to the idiot box. But I have to admit, some of it isn’t so idiotic this season. And I’m not even talking about HBO – the networks have finally come to their senses and delivered some really good scripted TV. I’d like to think it’s because of the Whedon Void – this is the first TV season since 1996 without a Joss Whedon show on the air, and the intelligence vacuum obviously needed filling. But whatever the reason, I’m digging TV right now.

For starters, if you’re not watching Lost, you’re missing out on one of the most intricate and puzzling TV mysteries since Twin Peaks. At first glance, it appears to be Lord of the Flies with adults, but there’s something creepier and much more fascinating going on. Lost employs an effective flashback device that focuses on one character at a time, and hence gives you little pieces of the connections between them each week.

Some of the episodes have misfired, but overall this show is excellent, and with the revelations of last week’s installment, it just got upgraded to can’t-miss status with me. Who knows how long J.J. Abrams and his staff can keep this going – and avoiding Twin Peaks Syndrome, in which a show teases out a mystery to the point where no one cares anymore, then reveals all and watches the ratings implode, is paramount – but I’m inclined to believe that there is a grand plan at work here. This show is going somewhere, and if the rest of the ride is as good as season one has been, then show me my seat and strap me in.

Wait… perhaps not a good image for a show about a plane crash. Scratch that.

Also kicking ass on Tuesday nights is House, Fox’s new medical drama. Yeah, another damn medical drama, but you know what? This one soars, thanks to the captivating performance of Hugh Laurie. His Gregory House is an abusive, confrontational, smug, self-righteous prick, but he’s also a genius, and he’s never wrong. Damaged people are always more fun to watch than blandly heroic types, and Laurie is a hoot. The dialogue crackles, the cast is perfect (especially Omar Epps, Robert Sean Leonard and, as House’s nemesis, Lisa Edelstein), and the plots are suitably knotty. But the attraction is just watching House be House.

Super-sized thanks to Jeff Maxwell for hooking me on this show.

What else? Believe it or not, The West Wing is picking up again, despite the writers’ apparent choice to give Jimmy Smits a shot at the presidency. He’s pretty awful in his role as Matt Santos, and as much as I don’t want a Republican in office, even in a fictional world, I’m pulling for Alan Alda’s Arnold Vinick. Gilmore Girls continues to do what it does, wonderfully. This season the writers answered the will-they-or-won’t-they between Luke and Lorelai, and rather than killing the show, it’s energized it. And South Park just launched its ninth season with a doozy of an episode in which Mr. Garrison got a sex change, and his testicles were implanted in Kyle’s knees. (Don’t ask…) Oh, and The Daily Show is still amazing, night after night.

I don’t know what the hell’s going on with TV lately, but I’m loving it. Especially Lost.

* * * * *

I get so much crap (oh, so much crap) for plugging Marillion on this site. I don’t know why – some people act like they’re the only band I review, which is ridiculous. They’re not even the act I’ve reviewed most often. I just happen to think that this one band’s whole catalog is worth hearing, and suddenly I’ve guzzled the Kool-Aid and I have no objectivity. Weird.

So I’m wary of recommending anything to do with them, lest people think I’ve changed the name of this site to Tuesday Marillion 3 A.M., with the M. standing for Marillion as well. But my job, as I see it, is to seek out music that others may not have the chance to hear, and let those folks know if it’s worth their time and cash. I wouldn’t stump for the band if I didn’t think that their music would reward those who choose to sample it.

In that spirit, here’s another Marillion-related disc that I quite like. If you’re one of those people who thinks that my critical abilities fly out my ear when I hear the band’s name, you can stop reading now.

Still here? Good.

I’m never sure what to think of side projects. If you think of a band like a family, then this sort of extracurricular musical activity can be seen as cheating, or as necessary therapy to keep the main unit together. A solo album is one thing – that’s one member of the family striking off on his own, making a statement. But a side project is one family member being welcomed into a different family, sharing a bathroom and maybe a toothbrush. Who’s to say he won’t like this new family better? Sure, he’ll call once in a while, send letters, but we’ll all know the truth.

When a band has been together for more than 20 years, like the four core musicians of Marillion have, those fears are abated somewhat. If Steve Rothery wants to do another Wishing Tree album, there’s little doubt that he’ll be back in the fold for the next tour. In a way, this is freeing, and the one member who seems to take the most advantage of this freedom is bassist Pete Trewavas. And you have to hand it to him – he has great taste in side projects.

First there was Transatlantic, a prog-rock supergroup if ever there was one. With the visionaries behind Spock’s Beard and the Flower Kings (Neal Morse and Roine Stolt, respectively) taking the lead, and Trewavas and Dream Theater’s awesome drummer Mike Portnoy laying the foundation, there was literally nothing this band couldn’t play. They made two albums of complex yet hummable progressive wonderment, then split when Morse decided to follow God.

And now there’s Kino, a slightly less super-sounding supergroup, but only because their respective main bands are less well-known. In addition to Trewavas, Kino includes Chris Maitland (ex-Porcupine Tree) on drums, John Beck (from It Bites) on keys and John Mitchell (from Arena) on guitars and vocals. It’s almost a who’s-who of semi-famous British prog bands, including one (Arena) that was started by one of Marillion’s first drummers, Mick Pointer.

But you know, forget all that. That’s just music-fan trivialities, of no interest to anyone who isn’t a little bit anal retentive. It’s possible to hear Kino’s debut, Picture, as the work of a new band making its first album, and enjoy it on those terms. Hell, it’s recommended, highly.

Kino plays classic progressive pop, and if you think that the term “classic progressive” is a little oxymoronic, you’re right. Progressive doesn’t mean progressive anymore, it means long and complex and inspired by Yes and early Genesis. The difference between a truly progressive act like the Mars Volta and a prog group like Kino comes down to how transparent the influences are. Kino sounds like mid-period Yes, with the attention squarely focused on skill and melody. It’s complicated stuff, but nowhere near as tricky as Selling England by the Pound, and the longest song is nine minutes. (Most of the others are around four or five.)

Calling it classic prog-pop is not a knock, by the way. These are powerfully melodic songs, draped in analog synth sounds and oceans of backing vocals, and produced to a lovely sheen. There’s something refreshing about a group of skilled musicians who just get together and play, with no frills and no gimmicks. Picture is an album of well-written, grandly played pop songs. The aforementioned nine-minute opener, “Losers’ Day Parade,” is textbook songcraft – a fine riff, a strong melody, a Beatles break, some restatement of themes, and a glorious coda. It may make me old-fashioned to say so, but it’s also the best song I’ve heard yet this year.

Mitchell has a voice that reminds me of Ray Wilson’s – you may remember Wilson as the guy who replaced Phil Collins on the criminally underrated last Genesis album, Calling All Stations. Mitchell’s voice is low and rough, yet can leap into a shining falsetto when needed. Observe “Letting Go,” with its classic pop chorus, and then smile uncontrollably as Mitchell jumps up an octave for the title phrase. It’s gorgeous. He handles the ascending and descending melody of “All You See” like a champ, too.

Perhaps the oddest song here is “Swimming in Women,” a dramatic prog ballad about the journey of a million sperm. Seriously. It’s rendered in typically verbose prog language, and without the packaging you might not be able to decipher the meaning, but there it is: “Sinking or swimming, swimming in women, breaking like waves against the rocks, one million voices, too many choices, you’ve got to line them up against the wall, the stronger shall rise while the weaker shall fall…” It’s fantastic, by the way.

I haven’t really mentioned Trewavas, because he’s perhaps the least flashy bass player in prog right now. He does his job, and he does it brilliantly, never calling attention to his work. The same can be said for all of the Kino guys, actually – there’s no hook here except really good songs, played really well. Beck’s keyboards get the most workouts, but they’re like Tim Rice-Oxley’s synths for Keane – in service to the songs.

Picture ends with the brief, understated title track, which encapsulates the premise: this is ego-free progressive pop of the kind you just don’t hear anymore. Trewavas is right now back playing with his main band at their annual UK convention, but I hope he keeps Kino going in his free time, because Picture is superb. It’s not modern or cool-sounding in the slightest, nor is it ironic and wry, but pretending I don’t love this sort of thing for the sake of scoring indie points is foolish. This is impeccably produced pop music at its finest.

Next week, who knows. I may have the new Choir album by then – they’ve chosen to call it O How the Mighty Have Fallen, which means that if it sucks, they’ve already written the review for me.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The Mars Volta really can’t be compared with anyone else.

Look around. I dare you. Try to find another band like this one, a band for which labels like “prog,” “punk,” “metal,” “salsa” and “jazz” have all been tried, even in combination, and then discarded because even the five-part adjective doesn’t do the music justice. The Mars Volta is perhaps the oddest, most ambitious, most all-encompassing group of musicians whose work is available in your local Sam Goody. That’s what’s most frustrating about trying to describe their work – there’s no really good reference point. They are strange and singular.

But what sometimes gets lost amidst talk of their willfully obscure concepts and big hair is that the Mars Volta boys are outstanding players. I first encountered Cedric Bixler Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (they even have prog-rock names) as members of At the Drive-In, a powerhouse punk band. I came in where most people did – with their swan song, Relationship of Command, and I owe my friend Allison Hart a huge thanks for making me listen to it. RoC is one of the most inventive, jabbing modern rock records you can buy, even though it never breaks free of the punk template for very long.

What I didn’t realize when I heard Relationship was that At the Drive-In was splitting at the seams when they recorded it. The push and pull of aggression and artistry evident on that record can be traced to the snarling, slapping fight between its members, drawn cleanly along party lines. When the inevitable breakup occurred, three-fifths of AtDI formed Sparta, essentially a less ambitious clone of their previous band. They went on to write earthbound radio-rock with a few added textures, but nothing that would set them apart from hundreds of other bands.

Meanwhile, Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez created the Mars Volta, and acted as if they had excised the Spartans like a cancer. Call their music what you will, but it’s certainly not earthbound. Their debut full-length De-Loused in the Comatorium is a huge rush of ideas, a teetering structure that endlessly rebuilds itself. Extended running times, songs with titles like “Cicatriz Esp” and “Eriatarka” – well, you can see where the prog label might come from. I’m surprised that the band didn’t object to being lumped in with all the swords-and-sorcery noodling that makes up much current prog, though, because their work is explosive, melodic, and nearly noodle-free.

It’s become clear what an influence the five At the Drive-In guys had on each other now that that influence is gone. Sparta’s second album, Porcelain, was even more accessible than their first, with calming string sections on a few tracks and very simple structures on most. The Voltas, on the other hand, have just released Frances the Mute, their five-song, 77-minute sophomore effort, and it’s even more insanely ambitious than the first. This is not for the musically faint of heart.

There’s never been a question of what the Mars Volta is capable of playing, only of what they choose to play, which is among the most freeing of dilemmas. On Frances, they’ve chosen to keep the progressive and punk elements of their style and mix in healthy doses of Santana (really) and Zappa, with a little Merzbow noise sculpting to boot. The album is a single piece from beginning to end, with no breaks between tracks. The three minutes of doom-pop that make up the first half of “The Widow” are the only three minutes of accessibility here, the only window in for the casual listener. For everything else, you’d better bring a comfortable chair and an open mind.

Frances starts with about a minute of tenderly plucked acoustics and Zavala’s clear, high voice. The melody, called “Sarcophagi,” is the first movement of the 12-minute “Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus,” and it crashes in with full force in abrupt, energizing fashion. Zavala is on fire here, draping the song with his awe-inspiring harmonies, and the stop-time rhythms are arresting.

“Cygnus” also, by its conclusion, sums up what’s wrong with this album. After nine energetic, constantly shifting minutes, it descends into an overly long coda made up of electronic noise and tape manipulation. This, and the extended guitar solo, spotlight the unfortunate sides of their Zappa influence. The end of “Cygnus” would be more palatable on first listen if “The Widow” didn’t do the same thing – it’s a three-minute song saddled with nearly that length again in noisy, spliced nonsense.

But that’s all part of the record’s attitude – this is an album on which every song is defiantly too long. The first four songs could each have been three to five minutes, but what would have been challenging and controversial about that? Instead they’ve embraced the everything-can-be-music aesthetic, and opened their record up into a huge, expansive head trip. Cedric and Omar know what they’re doing, and by the fourth track, “Miranda That Ghost Just Isn’t Holy Anymore,” they’ve integrated their static-filled interludes into the rising dynamic of the song. You’re more than four minutes into “Miranda” before a single note is played, but the resulting crescendo is pretty astonishing.

The Santana vibe plays out most strongly on “L’Via L’Viaquez,” another 12-minute monster sung almost entirely in Spanish. The Latin rock groove that bursts in after about 40 seconds of fluttery noise is perhaps this album’s biggest surprise, reveling in its own Ricky Martin-ness. The groove breaks down into a slow salsa numerous times, and Rodriguez-Lopez uses backwards guitar and textures to creepify what’s probably the most un-creepy beat pattern in music history. As “L’Via” continues, the guitars get more dissonant and the drums more eruptive, and it turns into spacey Spanish punk. It’s a fluid mix of genres that stands out as the high point of the record’s first half.

The aforementioned “Miranda” is next, and this one both suffers and benefits the most from the decompressed nature of this album. It runs 13 minutes, and contains two verses and three choruses, barely enough to float a song one-third its size. But damn if it doesn’t work, the intense slow build of the guitars and horns carrying you through. Unfortunately, it climaxes at the nine-minute mark and peters out by the 10, and you’re left with another overly long coda to remind you of just how slight “Miranda” actually is. The horns and strings that play the song out are marvelous, though.

So, four songs in 45 minutes, and then we’re left with “Cassandra Gemini.” Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from a 32-minute Mars Volta song, but I sure wasn’t anticipating the sustained live band explosion that is “Cassandra.” After the sedate waves of “Miranda,” this song just blows up, its brief intro coalescing into a flutter of flutes and horns dotting an extraordinary landscape of drums and guitars. The most amazing thing about “Cassandra” is that it continues in basically the same vein for more than half an hour, and it’s the only song here that doesn’t sound overextended.

This song is the most Zappa-esque, descending into free jazz at times and letting Adrian Terrazas really let loose on saxophone, a la Ian Underwood. “Cassandra” is the song that fully cements Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s status as a guitar god – he’s simply relentless, offering friction where it’s needed and bliss where you wouldn’t expect it. What sounds like a jam on first listen takes shape as a fully realized composition on repeated dives through, especially when the horn section comes in on the third movement. Zavala holds the whole thing together with his astounding vocals, soaring and spitting at once.

And with astonishing grace, they close “Cassandra” with its chorus (absent from the song for about 25 minutes at this point) and a reprise of “Sarcophagi,” uniting the record. Or, at least, trying to. Ordinarily one would look to the lyrics for common threads between five songs this diverse, but I can’t make head nor tail of them. The album is supposedly about a diary found by deceased band member Jeremy Ward, and the horrors contained within, but I’ve stared at the lyric sheet for a couple of days, and I’ve got nothing. Frances is an album that will stand or fall on its musical merits alone.

And for about an hour of its 77 minutes, it stands pretty well. It’s worth hearing just for a freak-out like “Cassandra Gemini,” the likes of which I haven’t encountered on a major label album in years. The rest of the record, unfortunately, drowns some great concepts and melodies in a sea of wasted time. Nothing here is as willfully obnoxious as Wilco’s “Less Than You Think,” but I do wish that some of the obvious care lavished on the sonics and the noise was spent on writing two or three more fantastic songs.

But then this wouldn’t be as confounding a record as it is, and I confess to admiring some of the sprawl on those terms. Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez obviously wanted to make exactly this record, exactly this way, and it’s heartening that they were able to, even if the results are less than they could have been. As I said, there is no question of what the Mars Volta can play, only of what they choose to play, and even with their drawbacks, I would still take Frances the Mute and De-Loused over anything these guys (and their former bandmates) have done. True artistic ambition is in short supply, and if nothing else, the Mars Volta should be commended for following their vision without compromise.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Buying Tori Amos albums has begun to make me feel like an X-Men fan.

By any appreciable standard, very few of the dozen or so X-Men comics that come out each month are any good. In fact, despite pockets of overrated coherence (see Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men), the dozens of X-Men comics haven’t been any good since 1988 or so. How do I know this? Because I read comic book message boards, where people who have been buying every X-Men comic since the glory days of Claremont and Byrne congregate to bitch about how bad every X-Men comic is.

Here’s what’s always mystified me about X-Men fans. They know the books suck. They readily admit that the adventures of these seemingly hundreds of mutants in matching costumes haven’t been worth reading in almost 20 years. And yet, every week, they line up and spend tons of money – the average comic costs three dollars, and there are literally more than a dozen each month. In the latest Previews catalog, there are 16 X-Men books listed for April. That’s almost $50, for one month, to keep current on a story that hasn’t been good since the ‘80s.

I’m an insane collector of a number of things, and even I don’t get that.

But here I am, spending my 20 bucks this week to keep current with Tori Amos’ story, when I know that it hasn’t been a rewarding trip since 1996. Amos’ first three albums changed my life. They sparked emotions in me that I didn’t know music could spark. I used to look forward to new Tori albums, counting the days and grabbing any scrap of information I could about them before they were released. The night before Under the Pink came out, I couldn’t sleep. Seriously.

And now I dread them, knowing that I will go to the record store and plunk down my cash for dull disappointment. Twice now I have bought that dull disappointment in limited edition packaging, complete with bonus DVDs and maps and stickers and other crap. Why? Because I am a Tori Amos fan. Much like the poor X-Men fan who drags himself to the shop each week to buy something he knows will make his head hurt and deflate his little heart, I buy Tori albums because she was great once, and I believe she can be great again, and if I just weather this current storm of mediocrity, my faith will be rewarded.

Hey, it worked for U2 fans.

It’s just that the mediocrity keeps getting more mediocre, if that’s even possible. The downward slide started in 1998 with From the Choirgirl Hotel, a lame stab at commercialism that still contained about half an album’s worth of gems. To Venus and Back was better, but still not very good, and the covers record Strange Little Girls was better in concept than in execution. And then, two years ago, Scarlet’s Walk punched the bottom out of the airship. It was the worst thing she’d ever done.

I pulled out Scarlet’s Walk recently to give it another spin, and I’m afraid my original opinion stands. It’s a slog. 18 songs over 74 minutes, and if she had cut it in half, it would still have been her worst album. I ended up only liking three songs (“Carbon,” “I Can’t See New York” and “Gold Dust”), and of those, I still don’t really like any of them, not to the level that I have liked Tori songs in the past. The album is long stretches of absolute, crushing boredom punctuated by brief signs of life that flicker out before they can catch fire.

And now here’s The Beekeeper, Amos’ eighth album, and she’s taken the odd step of preemptively extinguishing those signs of life before pressing the record button. Beekeeper is 19 songs sprawling over 79 minutes, and it’s all oatmeal. I can’t even tell you how much I don’t want to write this next sentence, but I have to. This record is horrible, the new champion Worst Tori Amos Album Ever. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t have been able to convince me that there would one day be competition for that prize, but here we are.

There isn’t a single song on The Beekeeper that makes me glad I bought it. There are some pleasant moments, some songs (like the opener, “Parasol”) that hold up well when compared with most top 40 radio, but the Tori Amos of her first few records is completely absent. The album is slicked up in an inoffensive sheen, and dotted with really awful lite-funk (“Sweet the Sting,” “Witness,” “Hoochie Woman”), the kind that Phish tried to do for 10 years. Beyond the styles and the production, though, the songs are just plain boring, and Amos doesn’t even seem all that interested in them.

There are bits I like – the swirling piano in “Barons of Suburbia” is a lesser version of that in “Carbon” (which makes sense since “Barons” is a much lesser song), but is still somewhat enjoyable. The brief “Original Sinsuality” is a musical highlight, and it’s too bad that the lyrics are so self-satisfied and obvious. The title track has some neat textures, and “Marys of the Sea” is the best song on the album. Too bad it’s at track 18. After 70 minutes of snooze-inducing blandness, “Marys” comes charging in like a classic, but taken on its own, it’s merely okay.

The rest? Terrible, typical, sub-Sarah McLachlan mundanity. And it hurts me.

I tried to follow my own advice and divorce this album from Amos’ past, just assess it as the work of a new artist, and I can’t. Without the deeply resonant work Amos delivered on Little Earthquakes, Under the Pink and Boys for Pele, there would have been no reason at all for me to have bought this. As the work of a new artist, it is pleasant and forgettable, and I wish I could think of it in those terms and just forget it, but I’m a Tori Amos fan. I feel betrayed when she disregards her own immense talent and phones an album in, like she has here.

I don’t get this way with most artists. If Ani Difranco wants to take four years and four C-minus albums to do something noteworthy, I don’t feel like she’s stabbed me four times. I have a personal connection with Amos’ early work that I can’t explain. But even in the most dispassionate, critical terms, she is an incredible songwriter, pianist and singer, and she could have (and in some sense, should have) been making astounding records for the last decade. But she hasn’t been, and with each new crap-fest, it becomes harder for me to convince myself that she ever will again.

So why do I keep buying Tori Amos albums? Because she still has it. She’s buried it, but it pokes its head out every once in a while. Last year’s Welcome to Sunny Florida EP contained six songs, each of them better than all of Scarlet’s Walk and The Beekeeper. Had I done the sensible thing and given up on Tori after Scarlet’s, I’d have missed out on some great work.

It’s getting harder to sift through the shit to find the corn, though. Case in point – the limited edition DVD that came with Beekeeper. The album made me sad, but the DVD made me kind of hate Amos. The interview segment is full of forced profundity, Tori obviously working hard to assign these second-rate songs a concept worthy of her. She’s always been a little loopy, of course, but she’s always been effortless about it. This interview makes her circular logic and oh-so-arty philosophies of life sound like work, like she’s selling her ideas to herself.

Really, it’s like this: “This garden is full of shapes, but not physical shapes, shapes of sound. And your shape may not be like my shape, yours might not be based hexagonically. But mine is based on a hexagon, because the cells of a honeycomb are hexagons, and of course you go to the beekeeper, right?” And I’m watching this, thinking two things: “Oh, my aching ass,” and, “What the hell is she talking about?”

But then, there’s an audio track on the DVD, called “Garlands.” And lo and behold, it’s a better song than anything on the album – it’s rich, full, expressive and bursting with the emotion Amos used to put into everything. It’s simply beautiful. And it raises a number of questions – foremost, if Amos can still reach into that place and create lovely statements like “Garlands,” then why doesn’t she? Why didn’t this song make the album? Why must one buy the limited edition package of a truly awful album to get to the one worthy song? Why didn’t she take “Garlands” as a challenge, say “Now we’re getting somewhere,” write 10 more like it and make a good record?

If Amos had completely lost the ability to make captivating work with an undercurrent of deep feeling, then I might not feel like kicking her, but she hasn’t, clearly. That she can write songs like “Garlands” and chooses to write songs like “The Power of Orange Knickers” is betrayal, plain and simple. Not just betrayal of her fans, even though it is that, but betrayal of her own prodigious gifts. She should be the most important female artist in the world, and she should be making music that forces people to pay attention, music that moves and reshapes and explores with passion. Music that will not be ignored. Instead, she’s making background noise for pre-formatted radio.

And it hurts.

But I will keep buying Tori Amos albums, like those sad X-Men fans, because I believe she can grab hold of her own power again. At this point, I don’t care what she chooses to sing about – she could make a 70-minute concept album about how great her kids are and how happy motherhood has made her, and I’d be in, as long as she meant it. Amos hasn’t sounded emotionally invested in anything she’s done for a long time, and The Beekeeper is the most remote, distant, uninvolving record she has made. It’s a record that all but dares me to give up on her, but I’m not doing it. I know she has great things left to say, great songs left to write.

Prove me right, Tori. Please. Prove me right.

* * * * *

We lost Hunter S. Thompson this week. This has been a really bad year for famous people I admire, and it’s only February.

Like a lot of would-be writers, I had two revelations about Hunter Thompson’s work. The first came after I encountered it for the first time, reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and that was that writing could be this alive, this dangerous, this all-involving. The second came years later, after numerous stabs at adapting Thompson into my own style, and that was that it can’t be done. There was only ever one Hunter Thompson.

My favorite Hunter-related memory has little to do with the man himself, since I never met him. But when I shared an apartment with Liz Balin, we had what we referred to as a “bathroom journal” – a little notebook that we would write in while on the toilet. I know, more info than you needed, but stick with me here. That journal rested in a bucket in the corner, and also in that bucket Liz had placed a thick volume called Daily Affirmations. And it was just as Stuart Smalley as it sounded.

So, of course, to counteract those vibes, I contributed my copy of Fear and Loathing to the bucket. I wasn’t hoping for much beyond spreading the disease that is Thompson’s writing to an unwitting recipient. I know that Liz read at least some of it, because one day I picked up the bathroom journal and found this written there, in a shaky hand: “What is this book?”

And I thought to myself, “Mission accomplished.”

I don’t have much to say about Hunter’s death, or the manner in which he chose to go, but if you’re looking for a good essay about it from someone who actually met the man, go here. It’s the blog of Dr. Tony Shore, and it’s worth reading beyond just the Thompson piece.

Next week, The Mars Volta.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

It’s 1:30 in the morning, and I’ve just returned from seeing a great gig.

I don’t get out to see live music as much as I want to anymore, but this was Keane, playing the Riviera here in Chicago, and I wasn’t about to miss it. Keane flips my particular switch more than any new band I have heard since the Ben Folds Five – they were the musical discovery of the year for me in 2004, and their album Hopes and Fears is pretty damn close to absolutely perfect.

And you know what? They’re better live.

Keane has a non-traditional lineup – singer Tom Chaplin, drummer Richard Hughes and keyboardist Tim Rice-Oxley, and that’s it. Rice-Oxley has the Jack White role here, meaning that every melodic contribution that’s not lead vocals is down to him. Live he writhes about like an epileptic, keeping time with his whole body and banging the hell out of his electric piano. In contrast, Chaplin mostly just stands there, but his voice is so powerful and clear that your focus is drawn to him anyway. Chaplin’s voice was even stronger live than on record, filling the theater all by its lonesome.

The band played most of Hopes and Fears, including its b-sides, but they also premiered two new tunes. What can I say except this: inevitably, there will come a day when Keane writes a bad song, a song that doesn’t effortlessly soar above nearly everything that currently passes as pop music. That day has not yet come, though. At this point Keane is testing my well-honed cynicism – they are so good that I’m already dreading the eventual decline, the middle third of their Behind the Music special, before the rehab and the reunion tour. May it never come to that.

And can I just add that if you haven’t bought Hopes and Fears yet, you really should.

* * * * *

The first thing most everyone says about Julian Cope is that he’s insane.

You’ll see it in the first paragraph of reviews, articles and interviews – Cope is fried, nuts, out of touch, on another planet, loopy, a hazelnut cream and a praline delight short of a full box of chocolates. He has weird ideas, weird beliefs, and most of all, he makes weird music. I got more than 5,000 results on a Google search for “Julian Cope” and “insane.”

And I’m not going to say that Cope isn’t a little bit crazy, but I think he’s insane in the same way that Dave Sim is insane. Both have looked at the world, processed all the horror and pain through their own individual filters, and come to some internally consistent conclusions. That these conclusions don’t jive with the thoughts of most of the rest of the world means little – both Cope and Sim are a very particular, very reasonable form of crazy, and spend any time with the works of either one, and you start to see the sense in what they’re saying.

It helps that Cope is an immensely talented songwriter. He started off as the lead visionary in a band called The Teardrop Explodes. After a couple of psychedelic records with them, he spun off on his own with a series of fractured pop records, including the near-classic Saint Julian. Still, the constraints of radio-pop seemed to be chafing him on the overly synth-poppy My Nation Underground. So, in 1991, he left his pop career behind and never looked back.

Perhaps Cope’s best regarded work is his what’s-wrong-with-the-world trilogy, released between 1991 and 1994. He explored man’s responsibility to the planet on Peggy Suicide, took aim at organized religion on Jehovahkill, and imagined a world gone to hell thanks to cars, gas and oil on Autogeddon. Along the way, he dropped Kraut-rock jams, Beatlesque carnival music, a couple of phenomenal space-rock guitar solos, and some world-class pop songs. These are three terrifically varied, well-constructed gems full of melody and madness.

And then? Well, he put out the scattered, swirly 20 Mothers in 1995 and the more focused, rollicking Interpreter in 1996, and then seemed to disappear. The general public hasn’t heard from Julian Cope in almost 10 years, but in truth, he’s been more active in those years than ever before. A visit to his website will show that, like many other bands and artists, Cope has latched onto the internet as a way to get his work out there with a minimum of external influence, and he’s been using it to build (ahem) his nation underground.

So let’s see. Cope has written several books on spiritual sites throughout Europe. He’s formed three bands, ranging from the moron-rock of Brain Donor to the ambient drones of Queen Elizabeth, and produced a number of very strange solo albums. The Rite series sounds like Prince’s News album, all beats and wah-wah, while works like Odin take drones and ambience to their 70-minute breaking point. He’s written some pop songs, too, but they’ve never been more odd-sounding. All in all, Cope has taken every opportunity to be as uncompromising as possible, sales be damned, and he sounds artistically happier than he’s ever been.

For years, though, he’s been talking about this album called Citizen Cain’d that he’s been working on. (And can I take a moment to marvel at that title? It’s a work of art all by itself.) After 36 months of work, Cain’d was finally released last month in a really cool package – two discs in a solid black jewel case, housed in a black slipcase. And the album is picking up some strong reviews and support, leading some to expect that it will be his commercial comeback, despite its release on his own homemade Head Heritage label.

Lest the reviews mislead those early-90s Cope fans into thinking that he’s created another Peggy Suicide here, though, I have to say that if you haven’t been following along, Cain’d will leave you scratching your head. The darkness of the packaging promises a dark record, and man, has Cope delivered on that score, but he’s also made one that follows closely on the heels of his work with Brain Donor and his more esoteric solo material. Cain’d has 12 songs, and not one of them is a hit. Even on alternative college radio. Trust me.

Cope says that Citizen Cain’d is split up into two CDs, despite running just a bit more than 70 minutes in total, because the songs are too “psychologically exhausting” to play all in a row. While I think that’s crap, I do applaud the decision, because the two discs are very different. The first is basically a Brain Donor album, loud and bashing and raw. Opener “Hell Is Wicked” crashes in on a pair of riffs that would make Zeppelin fans drop jaw, and then “I Can’t Hardly Stand It” explodes, heralded by Cope’s mad exultations.

There’s no getting around the sound of the first half of the disc – it’s mixed very strangely. The lead guitar that spills all over “I Can’t Hardly Stand It” is so loud and blatted that it may damage your speakers, and I think Cope knew he had written a catchy little number with “I’m Living In the Room They Found Saddam In,” so he damaged the vocal track. (Speaking of great titles, how about that one, huh?) Since the odd mixing decisions are confined to a few tracks, though, I have to think that Citizen Cain’d sounds exactly the way Cope wants it to. Similarly, he mispronounces Saddam Hussein’s first name, but I think he did it so that the lyric could be misheard as “I’m living in the room they found so damning.” That fits with the lyrics and theme as well.

The first disc concludes with a 13-minute waltz called “I Will Be Absorbed,” and any fears that this album will be nothing but Iggy Pop ditties should be allayed. “Absorbed” is a wonder, with some great melodies and a powerful chorus. It goes on a little long, but it leads into the more melodic second disc well. Disc two is slower, but no less dark – witness the opener, an 11-minute web of guitars called “Feels Like a Crying Shame,” in which he uses the title phrase to describe his own reincarnation.

“World War Pigs” is the album’ most indelible number, sizing up religious conflict with some pointed observations: “The word is out on Allah, he’s been hijacked…” “The Living Dead,” similarly, equates westerners with shambling zombies, and finds Cope walking through Armenia and decrying his own country: “I will not represent the living dead.” The song is delivered with little but Cope’s voice and guitar, and while it’s an odd choice for the intimate treatment, it works well.

And then the closer, “Edge of Death,” gives us Cope at his most abstract and howling. Over nine minutes of driving guitars (with no drums), Cope details a nightmare world, and examines himself in its shackles. This one is not for the faint of heart, as Cope’s vocals are, shall we say, unrestrained. But it’s a powerful piece, including actual helicopter sounds to add force, and it could only have been the last song.

As a complete trip, Citizen Cain’d doesn’t quite hold together, and those looking for a return to form will probably be disappointed – the album is another progression along Cope’s singular musical path, and it leaves little doubt that he’s going to follow this path for the rest of his life. (He’s already announced the title of his next project: Dark Orgasm. Yikes…) Listening to Cain’d is like peering into the mind of the sanest crazy person you’re likely to meet, and while it’s not a masterpiece, it’s up to the high standard Cope has set for more than 20 years. And, of course, it’s only available direct from him.

* * * * *

Cope’s website includes a section called “Unsung,” where Cope picks an album every month or so and gives it his full support. Reading this section led me to purchase one of the strangest and most oddly compelling albums I’ve ever added to my collection. See, there was this doom-rock band called Sleep, and they played slow, pounding metal as if the first three Black Sabbath albums were the only records ever released. And after two moderately successful stoner-rock platters (Volume One and Sleep’s Holy Mountain) they were signed to London Records.

And as legend has it, London paid a sizeable advance for the band to record their third album. And lo, the band did smoke the whole advance, buying huge quantities of pot and other substances, and when the time came for them to turn in that third album, they gave London something called Dopesmoker. And verily, I tell thee, Dopesmoker consists of a single 63-minute song, also called “Dopesmoker,” that chronicles the travels of the Weedian people to the Riff-Filled Land.

I’m going to repeat the pertinent parts of that, because I find them so amazing: A 63-minute song. The Weedian people. The Riff-Filled Land. It’s called Dopesmoker.

Naturally, of course, I had to have this thing.

And thankfully, the full version of Dopesmoker is available now after a protracted battle with London Records that caused the group to break up. London did release a 50-minute version of the song, retitled Jerusalem, but the 63-minute one is the real deal. It sounds very much like someone playing Black Sabbath and Paranoid very, very slowly, after pulling Ozzy’s tongue from his mouth and giving him food poisoning. It’s an endurance test. Time slows to a crawl while this is playing. I’ve made it through four times now, but I’m not sure my eardrums have.

And I’ve only made it through because I’m obsessive about music, and about finding patterns and compositions where others hear noise. I would bet that none of my friends could make it to the 20-minute mark, and I’m willing to put money on that. Cope’s current album of the month is by Om, a band that has risen from the ashes of Sleep, and it consists of three long songs that probably sound just like Dopesmoker. And I may have to get that one, too.

It’s a sickness.

Anyway, next week, Tori.

See you in line Tuesday morning.