So, did you all know that Dweezil Zappa and Lisa Loeb have a cooking show on the Food Network? Seriously. This makes me sadder than I can properly articulate.

I am typing this on my brand new Dell Dimension 8300 computer, my first column on the new beast. It is, in the words of the old show, better, faster, stronger than my aging Compaq, which I have mercifully put to bed. I get all my morning internet work done in eight minutes now, and I’m often finding myself sitting at the screen at 8:30 a.m. thinking, “Now what? How can I fill the rest of my day?” My monitor is like a tiny flat-screen TV, and my keyboard is somehow more receptive to pressure than my last one, making fast typing an easy and comfortable task. I’m halving my time on emails and other writings, just because I enjoy it more on the new board.

So here’s to a long and happy relationship. Let the honeymoon begin. I’m already enjoying my new Dell Jukebox, which, on shuffle, has just given me “I’m Bugged” by XTC, “Wintergreen Eyes” by Donnie Vie, and a selection from Peter Gabriel’s score to The Rabbit-Proof Fence, all in a row, like the best radio station on the planet.

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I haven’t said much about the Oscars this year, mainly because they seemed preordained. It was Lord of the Rings’ year, and anyone who has seen the films knows what a towering achievement in filmmaking they are, even if they’re not very good movies in the final analysis. Peter Jackson, at the very least, deserved his Best Director award, even if the voters, by necessity, considered the trilogy as a whole instead of just the third installment.

Outside of the Rings sweep, there weren’t any surprises, either. Much as I was pulling for Bill Murray, Sean Penn had this in the bag, and it was his turn. Sofia Coppola for screenwriter? Certainly. Charlize Theron winning for what I hear is an incredible performance in Monster? Sure. Why not? It was all so… blah this year, really. Maybe I’m just outgrowing silly awards shows, but the only part of the night I can truly say I enjoyed was Jack Black and Will Ferrell singing a song about lengthy acceptance speeches. Even the venerable Errol Morris came off like a bit of a schmuck.

I will give props to Sean Penn for mentioning the performance that I thought should have been honored above most others this year: Paul Giamatti’s in American Splendor. Once again, my favorite film of the year wasn’t even nominated, but I can’t complain that heavily this year because I just didn’t see a whole lot of films. Very little looked captivating enough to brave hordes of rude, inconsiderate people in order to pay nine dollars to see.

I have, however, already seen a film that I believe will be represented next year: The Passion of the Christ. And where to start talking about this?

Let’s begin here: Passion is, without question, the single most violent and brutal film I have ever seen, and I have no desire to see it again. There is a 25-minute scourging sequence, in which Jesus is whipped with multi-tailed contraptions tipped with metal blades that tear chunks from his flesh and leave him covered (literally, covered) in red gashes. I never have to see that again. Also, the nailing scenes, in which Jesus is attached to the cross in the most graphic manner imaginable? Never, ever want to watch that again. There were young children in the audience at my showing, and they were quite rightly disturbed.

Does all this gore have a point? That depends. Mel Gibson’s point is, most assuredly, that Christians have forgotten how unbelievably brutal the death of Jesus was, and bloodless passion plays in community churches have dulled people to the graphic nature of this sacrifice. I have spoken with Christians who came out of this movie deeply moved, because they see these lashings and think, every time, “That was for me. He’s going through this for me.” This is undoubtedly the context in which Gibson wishes you to view his film.

Trouble is, the movie itself doesn’t provide this context. Very little time is spent on telling the audience who Jesus was, and what he said, and why he said it. You’re expected to bring this context with you. But what if you don’t? There’s no doubting the power of the images in this film, but they remain unfocused to anyone who doesn’t already know what they mean. The movie doesn’t wield its power; it doesn’t argue its case. Hence, it allows you to filter it through whatever context you bring with you.

And that’s part of the reason, I believe, that Jewish groups are railing against the perceived anti-Semitism here. I believe there isn’t any – Caiaphas is cast in a negative light, certainly, but there are numerous other Jewish people who are portrayed much more sympathetically than, for example, the Roman centurions. The Pharisees represent a power struggle, a religious and political organization gone bad, and are not meant to characterize a nation. Or at least, that’s what I think, but see? The movie doesn’t support or refute my point effectively.

This is, absolutely, a film made for a particular audience, but millions outside that audience are going to see it. Some will wonder about this Jesus guy, and why he did what he did. Others will see it through the eyes of their own beliefs, and nothing in the movie will challenge their notions. And still others, perhaps the largest segment, will go see The Passion of the Christ out of curiosity, and get a two-hour film about a guy being whipped, beaten, nailed to a cross and brutally killed, in spectacularly gory detail. The fact that the film doesn’t effectively present itself as more than that is, to my mind, troubling.

And yet, I remain shaken by Passion, and I am in awe of Jim Caviezel, who plays the obviously inaccurate white-guy-with-perfect-teeth Jesus with incredible power. His eyes alone deserve their own Oscar. As a piece of cinema, this movie is stunning, powerful and unsettling. It tells an important part of a larger story very well – sometimes too well – and whether or not you believe in Jesus, the sheer filmmaking deserves respect. It is what it is, though – a part of a larger story, and I just wish that the movie didn’t invite you to write the rest on your own.

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Who knows what Jonatha Brooke might think about sharing a column with Jesus…

Jonatha Brooke is another of those literate, melodic singer/songwriters that I love and of whom the rest of the world has never heard. Check out my columns from early 2002, when I was trying to find a copy of her Steady Pull album in any music store I could find in Tennessee. I finally had to special-order it from Maine. Similarly, when I tried to find her new one, Back in the Circus, at my otherwise excellent CD store here in Maryland, I had to dig through the jazz section. ‘Cause it’s distributed by Verve, I guess, even though it plainly says “file under pop” on the back cover.

Suffice it to say that Brooke does not play jazz. She writes and sings glorious pop songs, in the vein of Neil Finn and Aimee Mann, and Circus is her sixth album, counting the two she made with the Story. She’s another in that long list of musicians who ought to be far better known than they are – you know, that list of names I’m always going on about. What’s infuriating about Brooke’s continued obscurity is the same thing that gets me riled up about others like her, such as Finn, Beki Hemingway, Michael Roe, etc: Brooke’s music is accessible, likeable, and would strike a chord with people, if only they could hear it. But with our current radio and distribution system, that’s never going to happen.

Brooke has been on an upswing since divesting herself of major labels in 2000. She watched her best album to that point, 10 Cent Wings, die a forgotten death on MCA Records, and quickly grew disillusioned with the major label scene. Like Aimee Mann, she formed her own label, Bad Dog Records, and has been using it to release her work ever since. And the work has reflected her newfound freedom – her newest songs usually turn out to be the best she’s ever done.

The eight Brooke compositions on Back in the Circus keep the tradition going. These are the best, most varied songs she’s ever put out, and although I will probably always love “Because I Told You So” (from Wings) best of all, there’s no doubting the increase in craft and emotion this album represents. The title track opens the record with a graceful waltz, “Better After All” may be her best shot at a hit single yet, “Everything I Wanted” is a great juxtaposition of desperate music and contented lyric, and “It Matters Now” is a delightful song, perhaps her most mature work to date.

Elsewhere, Brooke dips into electronic colorings, and finds them to her taste. “Sleeping With the Light On” is more eerie than anything she’s yet done, and “Less Than Love is Nothing” soars on a clubby beat and a lovely chorus. Brooke’s gorgeous voice, here and elsewhere, is a wonder all to itself. The album is remarkably diverse, almost to the point of disconnection – we jump from the trippy ambience of “Love” to the progressive pop of “Sally” and into the naked, beautiful sparseness of “No Net Below” without a break. She even caps it with a breathtaking rendition of an unlikely song: “Eye in the Sky,” originally by the Alan Parsons Project and brought to new life here. It’s the best example of finding the hidden potential in a song since Tori Amos covered “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and a great way to conclude the record.

If only she’d quelled her cover-version urge there. Alas, Brooke brought her album nearly to the brink of ruin with the inclusion of two more re-imaginings, as the Dirty Dancing people call them. As much as you might think an electro-pop version of “Fire and Rain” might be cool, trust me, it isn’t, and doing the same injustice to Brian Wilson’s revered “God Only Knows” is even worse. The latter song is one of the very best ever written – and it’s not just me talking here – and its original recording is still considered one of the finest ever undertaken, so why mess with it?

What we need on a Jonatha Brooke album is not another “God Only Knows,” but more Jonatha Brooke songs. These covers don’t fit in, and they break up the album’s flow immeasurably. Brooke would have been better served by writing a couple more tunes, or even leaving her James Taylor and Beach Boys homages off entirely. The result would have been short (nine songs), but it would have been her best album.

I’m becoming more and more enamored with my CD player’s skip button, though, and this is one of those cases for which it was made. Circus is also a good argument for paid song-by-song downloads. Getting this record off of iTunes, minus the bad covers, will only cost you nine bucks, and while you won’t get the packaging, you will get a better album than I got for $13. Back in the Circus is a wonderful record with two glaring flaws that nearly kill it completely, and that’s a shame. But with my luck, her trip-hop “Fire and Rain” will become the hit single she’s been chasing for 10 years now, create sales for this album in the millions, and go on to define her as an artist. So really, what do I know?

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I’m planning a retrospective column about Cerebus, one of the towering achievements of comic book storytelling, for after I’ve read the final issue. Since subscribers got their copies of #300 last week, I’m expecting to buy mine next Wednesday. Watch out for that, is all I’m saying, plus a look at the Cure’s box set, and reviews of Peter Mulvey, BT and Joe Jackson. Plus, on the horizon, a progressive rock detour with the new one from Fish, Field of Crows, and the two-disc Marbles from Marillion. Only a month to go before that one drops…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Two Fingers to the Man

The music industry is diseased. This seems to be a common diagnosis. Sales are down, quality music is nowhere to be found at your local Sam Goody, and record companies keep trying to force-feed the world with the latest teen-pop sex-tart or “really, like, rebellious” teen-pop anger-whore. In general, it’s probably safe to say that the geniuses who believe they are steering this ship of fools are totally out of ideas.

The whole situation even has Don Henley pissed off. Now here’s a guy I don’t exactly associate with the words “righteous fury,” but he lays it all out here. And for the most part, he’s right. Deregulation and consolidation have killed the idea of artists and replaced it with “content providers,” a phrase I found particularly chilling. It’s all about the money, all about shoving more product down our throats, and who can blame music fans for heading online in disgust?

The thing is, the music industry’s demise will not kill the music. Digital recording software is incredibly affordable, and online distribution is becoming more and more viable. It likely won’t be long before the whole commercial aspect of the music biz is handled online, from the discovery of new bands to the purchase of their music, whether that be in CD or MP3 form, or in some other medium we haven’t yet created. It’s coming, folks, and perhaps the best part of that for music fans is that the focus will be on the music, not the company-created image or the slick music video or the product tie-ins.

If you want to talk about artists who keep finding new ways to draw in listeners and create relationships with them, then near the top of the list has to be Mike Peters of the Alarm. For his entire career, Peters has been about circumventing that big business model that Henley’s talking about, and forging partnerships between himself and his fans. Visitors to his website can buy dozens of exclusive CDs, including the full 54-song version of In the Poppy Fields, the Alarm’s new album. Not only that, but fans were invited to vote for their favorite songs, determining the track listing of the 12-song retail version of the album.

The condensed album is out in April, but Peters has preceded its release with one of the most audacious hoodwinks in music history, and that’s what I want to talk about. Maybe you heard about this. The Alarm came out with their first single in 15 years last month – “45 RPM,” a nifty little punk raveup. Only they didn’t call themselves the Alarm. The single was released under the name The Poppy Fields, and Peters went so far as to hire a bunch of teenagers to mime the song for the video. His point, of course, is that the same music released under the Alarm name and played by four guys in their 40s wouldn’t have much of a shot.

And guess what? The move was a huge success. Music reviewers gushed on and on about this new band, this great new find. The Poppy Fields cracked the UK Top 40, a feat the Alarm no doubt could never have accomplished under their own name. Peters has now come clean, and the publicity has been massive. He’s appeared on dozens of news programs from around the world (Dan Rather even did a bit on him), engaging what he hopes will be a fruitful debate about the image-focused music industry.

Was it a stunt? Sure. People are certainly talking about the Alarm now, but what that might mean for the sales and success of the new record is still up in the air. By and large, people don’t like being fooled, but if anyone can bring people in on a joke like this, it’s Mike Peters. The question is, is it a valid point? And is it a point worth making?

In my mind, absolutely, on both counts. The music hasn’t changed – “45 RPM” is still a kickass song, no matter who’s playing it, and that’s the point. The rest, the trappings that record companies hope you’ll cling to and identify with so they can move more product, is all media manipulation. Hopefully this grand-scale satire will be an eye-opener, and the labels’ target markets will start watching MTV with newfound clarity, asking, “Would I listen to this if it were being sung by 45-year-old men?” The point is this: music is music, and image is nothing.

I’m glad I mentioned this today, as well, because it’s Mike Peters’ birthday. He’s 45, and still doing what he does, God bless him. Happy birthday, Mike.

The Don Henley link is courtesy of Dr. Tony Shore, who also gave me and this site a nice plug on his blog. Dr. Shore works with Silent Planet Records, a label that is the antithesis of the soulless corporate machine. They’ve released Aaron Sprinkle’s work and Terry Taylor’s Avocado Faultline, among others, and they were the guiding force behind the great tribute to Brian Wilson, Making God Smile. Check out the good doctor’s blog here and Silent Planet here.

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Second Grade

I very rarely do this, and I’d like to think it’s because I’m rarely this wrong, but I have to retract a review from earlier this year. It’s odd, because often I will get half a dozen emails taking me to task for a certain opinion, and I politely stand by it, but this time, only one reader grabbed me by the lapels and shook me (metaphorically speaking), and that was Lucas Beeley. And he was right.

When I first spun the new Phantom Planet album, I was hoping for The Guest, their excellent second release. When I didn’t get it – in fact, when I got what seemed to be its opposite, all snarling guitars and shouted vocals – I reacted negatively. My previous review was all about what isn’t there – namely, the sweet Beatlesque pop and delightful melodies they gave me last time out. For an admitted melody addict like myself, the jump from the hummable hooks of “Lonely Day” to the slam-bang riffing of “Big Brat” was hard to take.

But here’s the funny thing. I’ve been listening to Phantom Planet pretty consistently since then. I don’t know how, but it always finds its way into my CD player, and repeated listens have helped me take the blinders off. This is a great little record, loud and fun and yet still marvelously musical. The melodies are still there, and I don’t know how I missed the good stuff the first time – the slashing guitar lines in “1st Things 1st,” the feedback-saturated anguish that laces “You’re Not Welcome Here,” the updated ’80s pop of “Knowitall.” It’s all good.

One thing I said the first time still stands: this is not The Guest, and it’s not trying to be. But give it a few spins, Guest fans, and Phantom Planet will seep in, and then one day, when you’re not expecting it, the album will knock you out. Honest.

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Finding Dada

Dada’s back.

For a lot of you reading this, nothing more beyond those two words is needed. Dada is a band with a phenomenal cult following, and that following has waited six long years for new stuff. The band is unfortunately still best known amongst the general public for “Dizz Knee Land,” their quirky novelty song from 1992, which just reinforces one of the cardinal rules of career longevity: never lead with a novelty song. Dada never did another tune like it, and four unjustly ignored albums later, they broke up. But they left those four albums, and every one of them is worth tracking down and owning, particularly Puzzle and El Subliminoso.

After the split, guitarist Michael Gurley and drummer Phil Leavitt formed Butterfly Jones, a very-nearly-Dada band that made one swell album, Napalm Springs. (Bassist Joie Calio made a solo album as well, The Complications of Glitter.) Dada fans ate it up, but wouldn’t let the band be, and in 2003 they got back together, released a live record, and got to work on How to Be Found, the just-released fifth Dada album.

And let me say this right up front. I liked Butterfly Jones, and I liked Calio’s solo record, but when these three guys get together in a room and play, they produce sounds that, individually, they simply can’t match. It’s like magic. The parts are all great on their own – Michael Gurley remains one of a mere handful of guitarists with a signature sound, for example – but together, there’s something else, some binding, unseen Dada-force that creates an audible synergy. Napalm Springs was a nifty pop record with some great guitar work. How to Be Found is a Dada record, and there’s just no comparison.

At its core, Dada is a three-piece rock band, and their best work has always arisen from a stripped-down, jam-style feel. But there’s more, always – Gurley and Calio harmonize just about everything, like the blues-rock Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell, and their melodies are often sweetly surprising. Gurley uses his guitar like a paintbrush, jumping from the crunch of “Nothing Like You” to the clean, blissful sound of “Guitar Girl.” Some of these songs are propelled by stomping rock riffs, like “It’s All Mine,” and some waft along on smoky atmosphere, like the title track.

But the real attraction of How to Be Found is something that can’t be put into words. It’s indefinable, but it happens every time these three guys play together. No matter how trite and cliched the songs are – and some, like “I Wish You Were Here Now,” are pretty trite and cliched – the trio makes them sound glittering and fresh. I can’t understand it, but I’ve heard Dada together and members of Dada separately, and it’s the collective band energy, no doubt. In other hands, this would be a good-to-very-good rock and roll album, but in these six hands, it’s somehow more. Even a southern rock number like “Blue Girl” just takes flight when played by these guys.

I guess destiny is a difficult thing to understand, but when it stares you in the face, you just have to give in. Gurley, Calio and Leavitt were born to play together, and this new Dada album makes that perfectly clear. Just listen to the guitar lines and harmonies on “My Life Could Be Different.” It’s better than it has any right to be – what would have been a decent Butterfly Jones song is a mesmerizing Dada one. Perhaps these three will never find a musical situation to equal this one, and perhaps they had to split up for a few years to become certain of that. And maybe they don’t get it any more than I do. Like most things directed by fate, you just have to accept it and enjoy it.

So, in summary, Dada’s back. Get the new album here.

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Next week, Jonatha Brooke and Peter Mulvey. After that, my long-gestating review of the Cure box set.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, the brain surgeons at the WB canceled Angel this week.

If you’re not a fan of the show, you won’t give a crap, but as for me, it’s the only TV show I watch with any regularity. Angel is a spinoff of my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created and produced by Joss Whedon, perhaps network television’s only remaining genius. And while it has always suffered in comparison to its sister show, Angel is still one of the smartest, funniest, most inventive things to hit the airwaves since pretty much ever. Its passing will leave the cultural wasteland a far worse place.

More importantly, though, this decision by the WB seems like the final act of a dastardly plot that has finally succeeded in driving Whedon from the networks completely. He’s just barely recovered from the fiasco that was Firefly over on Fox. Here was a show that pretty much reinvented televised science fiction, breaking fully free from the Star Trek model. Here was a show full of engaging and mysterious characters, sparkling dialogue, and endless surprises. How did Fox treat this gift Whedon had given them? Well, let’s see. They aired the second episode first, leaving new viewers totally confused. They gave it no promotion, and they canned it after 11 episodes. Nice, guys.

So Buffy‘s seven-year run is over, Firefly has been executed and its corpse dressed up in a bittersweet DVD package, and now Angel is ending, seasons earlier than expected, and despite a decent ratings boost from last year. And for the first time since 1997, there will be no Joss Whedon show in the fall lineup this year. And I think I’m giving up television entirely. We still have eight Angel episodes left, and they’re still as off-the-cuff brilliant as ever – witness this week’s ep, in which our titular vampire investigates a haunted children’s program and is turned into a puppet, complete with three-fingered hands and permanent scowl. Next week’s was even written and directed by Whedon himself. But it’s somehow less exciting now.

There’s the obligatory petition online, but I’m not sure it will do any good. I think the best case scenario would be this – Whedon goes away and makes his Firefly movie, and then comes back and pitches something equally brilliant to HBO. It seems to be where all the visionaries are headed these days.

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So there’s this old band called Human Radio that I love. They only released one album, self-titled, but it remains one of the most criminally overlooked pieces of smartass pop I’ve yet heard. Imagine the Beatles hanging out with Stevie Wonder (when he was good) and inviting violinist Sugar Cane Harris to come jam with them, and you’ve kind of got the idea. Plus frontman Ross Rice wrote some terrific songs, witty and weaving wonders that transcend the dated production of the album. Last I heard from him, he’d made his nifty solo debut, Umpteen, in 1997, and then disappeared.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover Rice’s website, complete with a first-person history of the Human Radio days. And imagine my further shock and delight to find that the band recorded a whole second album, one which was never released. Ten legal and sanctioned downloads later, I became the proud owner of a copy of Human Radio II.

And it’s good stuff. It’s not quite on par with the first one, but I’ve had more than 10 years to dig into that one, so we’ll see if the sophomore effort holds up over time. There are some embarrassments (“This House,” “Think Too Much”), but there are also some glittering gems like opener “Yesterday Girl” and sweet love song “15 Million Worlds Apart.” The prize here is “While You Were Sleeping,” which has vaulted over some long-loved favorites as my pick for best Human Radio song. And to think I might never have heard it at all. So thanks, Ross.

It’s like Christmas.

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My favorite CD of the year so far only has four songs on it.

You can guess that this has caused me some consternation – by my current set of rules, this record won’t be eligible for the Top 10 List in December. And while I certainly hope there will be 10 better albums than this EP in 2004, and I don’t foresee a big problem, at the moment my favorite record is again disqualified.

I am talking here about the Bens, and their self-titled four-song EP. The Bens are Ben Folds, Ben Kweller and Ben Lee, and I hope these four songs are merely a teaser for a full-length record, because they seem to have combined their strengths beautifully here. Opener “Just Pretend” is a sweet breeze, “XFire” is a trashy ’80s pop tune complete with synth vocals, “Stop” is a lo-fi winner, and closer “Bruised” is just perfection, Folds in the lead with his voice and piano. The three Bens take turns singing lead, and they harmonize gloriously.

Simply put, this is four different shades of terrific pop. The EP is only available at shows and online. The Bens are continuing with upcoming solo projects, including Kweller’s On My Way and Folds’ still-untitled project, but it would be a shame if they decided not to continue this partnership. This is 14 solid minutes of pop bliss, folks. Like the man said, it’s all about the Benjamins.

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And now I have to try to find something new to say about the Indigo Girls.

This is not an easy task. Emily Saliers and Amy Ray have been doing what they do so well for so long that pretty much everything one can say about their sound has been said. For nine albums now, the Girls have plied their stock-in-trade: wonderfully written folk, rock and pop songs, sung by two voices that were born to go together. We’re talking about a career that’s just vaulted past the 15-year mark. We’re talking about one of the most loyal cult followings in the country. We’re talking about one of the most important and influential folk music successes since the days of Joan Baez. What more can I add?

All I can do is tell you about the new album, All That We Let In, and put it in perspective with the rest of their catalog. Do I even need to mention here that it’s another really good one? Didn’t think so.

Last decade, the Indigos released a series of albums that expanded their sound exponentially. The songs remained pretty much the same, but the production grew and grew. 1998’s Shaming of the Sun felt like critical mass, and 2000’s Come On Now Social slipped into overload. How sweet, then, was 2002’s Become You, a knowing return to the Girls’ acoustic roots. All That We Let In continues in the same vein, with a few more pop leanings. It bears the most resemblance to Rites of Passage, actually -acoustic guitars prevail, pianos and mandolins augment, and the Girls sing beautifully as usual.

The album is a joy right from the start. It opens with “Fill It Up Again,” simply the best and sprightliest single they’ve released since “Galileo.” True to its title, it’s about replenishing, about finding roads and places that re-energize: “You’ve been the hole in my sky, my shrinking water supply, before my well runs dry, I’m going round the bend and fill it up again,” Saliers sings, with perfect accompaniment from Ray. Really, if this song is not at least a minor hit, then something’s wrong, and radio has lost touch with the sort of songs that made pop music great in the first place.

“Fill It Up Again” is so perfectly formed that leading with it could have cast the rest of the record in a bad light. Though it never again achieves that level of energy, the album doesn’t flag – the remaining 10 songs are all winners too. Saliers has tapped into her melodic folk well again, delivering unabashedly sentimental numbers like “Free In You” and the lovely “Come On Home.” On the latter she offers another sweet song of support, like many she’s written before, but they never get old. “I’m stacking sandbags against the river of your troubles,” she sings, and it melts your heart.

Amy Ray has long been the more political and explosive of the two, and while this album never ignites with the fury of her solo album, she does contribute an edge here. One song in particular, “Tether,” cranks up the electrics for four minutes of concerned observation: “Can we bring it together, can we call from the mountain to the valley below? Can we make it better, do we tether the hawk, do we tether the dove?” Similarly, she notes in “Perfect World” that all we need do to make the song’s title a reality is “look the other way.”

But this is not a political record. If you want a boiling reaction to world events, you might want to try recent Ani Difranco albums. The Girls these days are more about love and beauty, and their music is all the better for it. Even a song called “Rise Up,” which in days past might have mentioned oppression and injustice, even hintingly, is here about finding new life in yourself and others: “Just move to the music, move your body to the band and rise up.” All That We Let In is another in a hopefully endless series of great Indigo Girls folk-pop albums, full of laughter and joy and small, wonderful delights. And in a way, making an album like this these days is a political statement all its own.

My inner geek cannot let me end this review without mentioning the album’s cover art. It’s by Jaime Hernandez, one of the famous Los Bros Hernandez who write and draw the superb comic Love and Rockets for Fantagraphics. Hernandez even crafted a wordless comics story for the interior booklet pages, and his work makes this gorgeous little album even more so. Jaime has dedicated most of his artistic life to chronicling the lives of his spunky creations Maggie and Hopey, and those stories are soon to be collected in a deluxe hardcover called Locas. Check him out here.

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Next week the deluge begins, with new records by Jonatha Brooke, Jonny Greenwood, Grant-Lee Phillips, Starflyer 59, and advance peeks at forthcoming discs by Peter Mulvey and Dada. Hope I can clear my schedule…

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Well, this year has started to suck already.

Julius “Julie” Schwartz died Sunday morning at age 88. The name Julie Schwartz is probably unfamiliar to you unless you read comics, and even then, you’ll only recognize it if you read beyond the names of writers and artists to those of the editors behind the scenes. Schwartz worked at DC Comics for 60 years, most of those as an editor, and he’s widely credited with directing the so-called Silver Age of comics in the ’50s and ’60s.

Many people don’t know what an editor does, especially in comics, but it goes well beyond correcting spelling and grammar. Among other things, editors at mainstream companies like DC work with writers on storylines, often suggesting entire years-long directions for certain characters. A bad editor can stifle the creative process, but a good one can be like a writing partner, one with an objective sense of story. By all accounts, Julius Schwartz was a good, if not amazing, editor. Opinionated, certainly, but for 60 years he worked with one clear goal in mind – making comics better by making better comics. He was one of the good guys.

* * * * *

The beginning of the year is starting to fill out nicely with new releases. Next week we have the new Indigo Girls, All That We Let In, and the week after that new ones from Jonatha Brooke (Back in the Circus), Grant Lee Phillips (Virginia Creeper), Starflyer 59 (I Am the Portuguese Blues) and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (the score to Bodysong).

It’ll be the end of March before the major stuff starts seeping out again, including a new Lenny Kravitz called Funk and a blues album from Aerosmith with the un-Super-Bowl-like title of Honkin’ On Bobo. The party really starts in April, though. Just in the first week we have a new album from Todd Rundgren (Liars), an instrumental project from Trey Anastasio (Seis de Mayo), and the long-awaited reunion album from Tears For Fears (Everybody Loves a Happy Ending). Oh, and the new Modest Mouse, with my second-favorite title of the year so far: Good News for People Who Love Bad News. (More on my first favorite in a minute.)

On the far horizon are new things from the Magnetic Fields (reportedly titled i, just that, lower case), Sophie B. Hawkins (Wilderness) and Pedro the Lion (completing their trilogy with Achilles Heel). And then in June comes political punk band Bad Religion, who’ve served up my favorite album title of the year, and perhaps of the past several years, with The Empire Strikes First.

Gonna repeat that: The Empire Strikes First.

Bloody brilliant.

* * * * *

I’ve been having a tough time with Harry Connick, Jr. lately, and I’m not sure if it’s me or him.

Connick started his career as a piano player in New Orleans, plunking out jazz standards with a confidence that earned him a record contract. When he opened his mouth on his second album, 20, and the soundtrack for When Harry Met Sally, his career took off. He was like a looser, funkier Frank Sinatra for a new generation. From that moment on, Connick has rarely stopped surprising with the depth of his musical ability. He started writing his own songs on We Are In Love, a classic orchestra album. He formed a jazz trio and proved his worth as a player on Lofty’s Roach Souffle. He started arranging all his own songs on the dynamite big band album Blue Light Red Light. And his fans followed him wherever he went, despite the fact that he rarely tread the same ground twice.

And then, sadly, they didn’t. Connick branched out into funk-rock with two wild (for him) albums called She and Star Turtle. (The latter was even an acid-drenched concept album about an alien turtle looking for funky music on Earth to save his dying planet. Really.) And the people turned on him, as he must have expected they would. They walked out of his concerts in droves, and refused to buy his newer work. Which is a shame, because She and Star Turtle are really good records.

Unfortunately, the louder, funkier stuff appears to be where his heart has been since. His scraping return to Sinatra-ville, the ultra-slow, nearly suicidal-sounding To See You, was followed by a lame attempt at a big band album called Come By Me. That one includes an overly dramatic version of “Danny Boy,” for pity’s sake. You can trust me, save for the rollicking title track, it’s a lame record. In fact, since his retreat back into his comfort zone, his output just hasn’t been the same. He made another Sinatra-style record and a children’s album after Come By Me, and neither one sounded like albums he wanted to make.

You can even hear it in his voice. His powerful, soaring tenor, which made the finale of “Buried in Blue” so entrancing, has been replaced by a lazy, sometimes flat, meandering mope. He occasionally pulls it together and wields that voice the way he used to, but it’s no longer a given. Like a singing Jim Carrey, he knows what the people like, and he seems determined to give it to them, even if he’s secretly yearning to stretch out. (The fact that audiences booed his last attempt to stretch, his Broadway show Thou Shalt Not, may have something to do with it as well.)

Connick’s two recent high-profile projects bear this out, for the most part. He just released Only You, a collection of “romantic standards from the ’50s and ’60s,” and it sounds exactly like you’d expect. The songs are mostly slow, the arrangements mostly sweet, and Connick sings them all in that lazy tone that’s becoming his trademark. There are some surprises here, like his percussive reading of “My Blue Heaven,” and his lone solo composition, “Other Hours,” which hails from that aforementioned Broadway show.

There isn’t a moment here, though, that sparkles with the imagination Connick possesses. It’s all giving the people what they want. This is the kind of album he can make easily, and the kind that he believes will sell well for him, as the Valentine’s Day marketing campaign surrounding it makes clear. As pleasant as it all is, I don’t buy Harry Connick albums to hear him sing rote versions of “The Very Thought of You,” or “For Once In My Life.” He could do, and has done, much better.

Far more successful, oddly enough, is his recent Christmas disc Harry for the Holidays. I know, Christmas albums are so lame, but this one vaults over his previous holiday collection, When My Heart Finds Christmas, mostly because it has a pulse. This is a big band Christmas, as you can tell from the superb opening rendition of “Frosty the Snowman,” all blazing brass and lightning bass.

Connick stumbles a bit near the end, when, ironically, he tries to stretch out. The white-boy soul of “This Christmas” is too sugary, and the less said about his country-style duet with George Jones, “Nothing New for New Year,” the better. But how can one complain when there are such muscular and inventive things here, like his creepy “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? It’s strange, but his frothy Christmas album is more alive-sounding than almost anything he’s done since Star Turtle.

Or, at least, it would be if not for his other 2003 album, a lower-profile release that works hard to restore one’s faith in Harry Connick, Serious Musician. Other Hours, subtitled Connick On Piano 1, was even released on Wynton Marsalis’ imprint of Rounder Records, for that extra bit of musicianly pedigree. It’s an instrumental jazz quartet album, full of tricky melodic numbers and some flawless playing from Connick and his ensemble. Particularly good is saxophonist Charles “Ned” Goold, a longtime Connick band member, but the foursome plays together remarkably well.

This album is mostly made up of songs from Thou Shalt Not, and in this setting (as opposed to their original Broadway renditions), the songs come alive. I vastly prefer the version of the title track here, for example, to the vocal one on Only You, and to the Broadway cast version. This little album just bops along wonderfully from start to finish, reminiscent in a way of his earlier trio work, but with more skill and force.

This, this is the Harry Connick I want to hear more from – the guy who writes songs, takes risks with their arrangements, and plays them magnificently. In a way, I hope projects like Only You afford him the luxury of making more records like Other Hours, because it’s obvious upon hearing both where his interest lies. He proved long ago that he doesn’t want to be Frank Sinatra, and music-for-grandmothers albums like Only You can only feel forced when stacked next to Connick’s real artistic endeavors. There’s no need for Connick to decide who he is, musically speaking, once and for all. I just sort of wish he’d declare who he isn’t. Or rather, who he isn’t anymore.

Next week, probably the Indigos.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I’m going to discuss the British, and I’m going to do it without mentioning Monty Python or Tony Blair. Wish me luck.

It seems to me that the chief contribution of Britain to the arts over the last century has been to perfect the innovations of others. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of artistic achievements out there that are uniquely British, including, as per above, the Comedy Troupe That Cannot Be Named, but give the Brits a unique idea developed elsewhere, and they shine. Just in the last 50 years, they’ve put their indelible mark on two decidedly American artforms, rock ‘n’ roll and comics, to such a degree that one might think them responsible for the original ideas.

If you need any proof that the British have taken over American comics, just look at the top books in the industry – the X-Men line, which has seen sales explode recently, largely due to the contributions of British writers Grant Morrison, Peter Milligan and Paul Jenkins. The invasion began in the early ’80s, when ubergenius Alan Moore took over Swamp Thing and within pages made it better than it had ever been. Along came Neil Gaiman, who created mainstream comics’ greatest extended graphic novel with The Sandman. Meanwhile, Morrison worked wonders with Doom Patrol and Animal Man, Milligan blew minds with Shade the Changing Man and, oh yeah, Moore wrote a little book called Watchmen, the likes of which we haven’t seen since.

Americans just had to face the fact – the Brits did these little sequential art stories better. Much, much better.

Same thing with rock ‘n’ roll. (That’s the preferred spelling, by the way, eliminating both the “a” and the “d” from “and.” I just can’t bring myself to write it any other way, and Ryan Adams agrees, so hah.) We came up with that unique mix of boogie and blues, folks – Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, Little Richard, all Americans. But in the early ’60s, something happened: the British started doing it better. Between the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, they trounced everyone stateside, and they kept on doing it with the Who, the Kinks, Cream, Led Zeppelin, and the list goes on. For decades, we let them come on in and immeasurably improve on our foundation.

(Lately, they seem hell bent on performing a similar feat with rap, another purely American art form – witness The Streets and Ms. Dynamite, for example. But we still seem to have a lock on that one over here.)

It’s odd, then, that when the British create their own sound, lay their own foundation, they seem unable to develop it much at all. The most innovative British band (and perhaps band in general) of the last 20-some years is Radiohead, who turned Britpop on its ear with the atmospheres and dynamics of OK Computer. Since then, though, Radiohead has burrowed up its own ass, and the British scene has been full of acts trying to make an entire career out of imitating their OK Computer sound, albeit with a more commercial sheen. Trouble is, none of those bands have even hinted at any significant evolution. The sound is the sound is the sound, and if you like one modern Britpop band, chances are you’ll like them all.

Luckily for me, I like them all. It’s a sound I respond to, despite the near-total lack of growth exhibited by the new crop. The flaws are easy to see, but the overall sense of anthemic yearning carries the listener along, and often takes one skyward in ways that are wholly expected, but always welcome. Exhibit A is, of course, Coldplay, whose music offers no surprises, yet stirs the soul. I have heard complaints that Coldplay is boring, and on a purely technical level, I can easily understand that criticism. But Coldplay, like much of the new British scene, is aiming for the emotional over the technical, a goal I can heartily endorse.

The same can be said for Starsailor, a band whose first album, Love is Here, wore its sizable heart on its sleeve. Starsailor does British pop, there’s no way around it, but they believe in British pop, and you’ll not find a more stalwart emoter than singer James Walsh. He sings of love, devotion and happiness in often ludicrously simple and direct terms, but he sells every word. When he sings “Love is Here,” you can feel that he really, really believes that love is, indeed, here.

Starsailor’s just-released second album, Silence is Easy, is a pleasant burst of more of the same. There are no alarms and no surprises – the band still takes much of their sound from Radiohead and fills in the holes with the Beatles. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se, but it certainly doesn’t send British guitar-pop music cascading into new areas. The album is a massive production, with full string sections and pianos and layers upon layers of guitars, but it still manages to be quiet and moving. Just, in fact, like their first album. (Even the title is similar – I think their next one, barring a seismic shift in sound, should be called Noun is Adjective.)

And yes, I have to talk a bit about Phil Spector, who produced two of the tracks on Silence is Easy. Much has been made of his contribution, and of how the album might have sounded had he produced the whole thing, but his two tracks (the title song and “White Dove”) sound of a piece with the rest. The ringing guitars, emotional vocals and sweet strings are present even when Spector is not, so it really isn’t that big a deal. More credit should perhaps go to the band, who produced the rest with Danton Supple, for matching Spector’s work with their own.

Still, this sort of thing can’t be that hard to do. Arrange three chords, write some optimistic lyrics, add some strings and you’re done. That the result of this elemental alchemy is somehow magical is the eternal mystery of Britpop, and it’s one that Starsailor sees no benefit in unraveling. They are what they are, and they do what they do, even if countless others also do what they do just as well.

Elbow is, at least, a little bit different, but one can be forgiven for not being sure if they’re different in a good way. They seem to want to be a British pop band, but lack the necessary energy, so they go about imitating the Radiohead sound much, much more slowly. Their songs unfold lazily, and require tremendous patience. They’re also one of those bands that milk one note and one melody often enough within one song that any deviation sounds like a soaring revelation. In a way, they’re like a sleepwalking Catherine Wheel. Lead throat Guy Garvey even looks like a bloke who can’t bring himself to get out of bed in the morning.

And yet for all that, they’re mesmerizing. Their new album Cast of Thousands has the slowest bloom of any record I’ve heard recently, but when it’s in full flower, it’s pretty beautiful. The improvements over their first album, Asleep in the Back, are all cosmetic – the production is spacier, the instrumentation more ornate, but the songs are the same slow horizon lines as before. Elbow is a band that all but refuses to rock out. When they plug in, as they do on first single “Fallen Angel,” they use the electric guitars to swirl around one note rather than add dynamics.

Around it all is Garvey’s voice, uniquely British, which sounds often like he’s under hypnosis. He mopes around the songs on this record like a drunk looking for a place to sleep. When he reaches for a soaring melody, like the one on “Fugitive Motel,” it’s breathtaking in contrast. I know I’m doing a terrible job of explaining what’s appealing about this band. Elbow makes you wait and work for it like few of their peers, and underneath they’re basically another good-to-great Britpop band raised on Radiohead, but in a sound and style so devoid of innovation and character, what they offer sounds like bliss.

Strangely, the one thing about this album that doesn’t quite work is the very thing that gives it its title. Elbow utilized their audience at a 2002 Glastonbury show as an impromptu choir, splicing their echoing vocals onto “Grace Under Pressure.” It sounds like a hurried effect, rather than a magic moment, even though the sentiment (“We still believe in love, so fuck you”) is one that would seem to fit a cast of thousands well. Also strangely, two of the most beautiful tracks (“Whisper Grass” and “Lay Down Your Cross”) are new additions for the U.S. release. These songs make excellent counterpoints to the rest of the album, in that they are relatively immediate and tuneful. It’s hard to imagine the record without them.

In the end, the lazy lope of Elbow may be Britpop’s best hope for advancing beyond the float and chime in which it seems mired. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the likes of Starsailor, or of Travis, or of Coldplay, or of South, or of… well, you get the point. It’s a good sound, but it’s starting to become as formulaic as anything else. A band like Elbow may not achieve beauty as much as it hopes, but at least Garvey and company are trying for something that reaches beyond the constraints of Britpop. Whether they (or any of the new crop) will break through to something else, something that redefines their chosen sound as much as the Beatles and the Stones redefined theirs, remains to be seen.

Next week, Harry Connick Jr. How’s that for switching gears?

See you in line Tuesday morning.

In reading some of my previous columns, I’ve come to one unfortunate yet inescapable conclusion: I bitch a lot.

Oh, sure, it’s still not enough bitching for some of you – I get emails all the time that take me to task for being so “positive” – but this column, by and large, has painted a pretty bleak picture of the state of the music industry. It’s not the music that bothers me so much, naturally, as it is the diseased system of marketing and distribution. Even if one wishes to sift through the crap to find the good stuff, the modern music machine makes it extremely difficult to a) hear about good artists and b) find their work.

One thing I don’t seem to do, however, is point the finger at the artists themselves. Well, that ends now. No target should be safe from my scattershot wrath, and in that spirit, I feel compelled to point out that sometimes, the good stuff is hard to find because the artists in question seem to want it that way. Most times I understand willful obscurity, especially when dealing with artists who genuinely do not want the spotlight to shine on them. That’s not what we’re talking about here.

We’re also not talking about artists for whom obscurity is a lifestyle. It’s no secret that much of the so-called good stuff would not appeal to the masses. Aphex Twin, for example, will never have a top 10 single, unless James radically alters his sound. And that’s his choice – he’s seemingly accepted his role as a fringe player, one whose beauty is only for a few beholders. His choices keep him there, but every one of them (including releasing a slew of singles and EPs under other names) is understandable within his worldview.

No, I’m talking about artists that already appeal to a wide base, and could appeal to a wider one, if they’d only stop making bizarre choices, ones which, whether they know it or not, make it nearly impossible for a casual fan to hear some of their best work. The template for this sort of thing is Prince, who outsold pretty much everyone whose name wasn’t Jackson in the ’80s, but who made some decisions afterwards that splintered and obliterated his fanbase. Maybe it’s just me, but changing your name to an unpronounceable symbol, releasing nothing but three- and four-disc sets, and then packaging your best work in years (The Truth) as disc four of one of those sets? Not good choices, especially if you’re then going to complain about sales.

Or, take Matthew Sweet. Here’s a guy who should be much more famous than he is, and the odd thing is, he wants the same thing. His music is so delightful, so appealing, that the only reason I can come up with for his continued semi-obscurity is that people haven’t heard his work. But then, that’s not true either – there was a time in the mid-’90s when Sweet was the it-guy. Girlfriend, his most successful album, landed him three hit singles, and the follow-ups Altered Beast and 100% Fun didn’t do so badly either.

And sure, he had a couple of duds after that, including his absolute masterpiece In Reverse, but that was the record company, surely. Sweet even complained about them at the time, which led to his exodus from Volcano as soon as his contract was up. Here, let me put together a quick marketing package for Sweet’s next project – reunite the Girlfriend lineup, make a simple guitar-pop record full of hooks and potential hits, and then find a label that will promote the hell out of it. True, such a move would be seen as angling for market share, but a new record from the lineup that scored his greatest success? If you build it (and it’s good, and it’s marketed well), they will come.

This isn’t just me talking here. Sweet has, believe it or not, done just that. His new album brings together drummer Ric Menck and guitarists Richard Lloyd and Greg Leisz for 12 terrific, rollicking pop songs, most of which would fit comfortably on any good radio station, and would open ears and move units nationwide. In short, people have been clamoring for just this thing from Sweet, and it’s really good, and they’d like it.

So what does he do with this album? He titles it Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu – really – and releases it only in Japan. The intentions are good. Japan has long been a fertile market for Sweet, and he really does love the place and its culture. He conceived Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu as a love letter to his Japanese fans, and they undoubtedly deserve it. But to make something this good, something which caters to the tastes and, yes, gripes of his fans in places other than Japan, and then give it no fanfare over here seems strange. The album has seen a U.S. release, on Sweet’s own Superdeformed label, and can be ordered from his website (www.matthewsweet.com) and found in, well, some record stores.

But not many, and that’s the point. Trust me, if you like Matthew Sweet, you will like this album. A lot. It’s exactly the sort of uncomplicated yet finely crafted record Girlfriend was, chock full of ripping guitars, catchy hooks and great vocal harmonies. The opening trilogy is like hearing three of the best songs from his greatest hits collection in a row, and while there are dead spots (the minute-long “Spiral,” for example), the album is overall as solid a group of songs as you’d expect from Sweet in his prime. It’s also full of joy, perhaps the most flat-out fun record he’s made in a while.

The secret may be the slapdash way it was created. Sweet wrote all the songs in one week (!), and recorded the album at his house. The self-imposed limitations seem to have freed him, in a way, to create the kind of raw energy that’s been lacking from his last couple of major productions. In Reverse is an amazing album, don’t get me wrong, but he labored over nearly every second of it, and you can tell. This one flows out in a thrilling burst, and it’s great to hear him do this sort of thing again.

So yeah, it’s called Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu, and you’ll only find it at smaller record stores or online. Just as icing on the cake, the title only appears in Japanese on the cover, as well, so don’t worry about spelling it right. It’s got a funny cartoon picture of a girl and a cat, and no track listing. Happy hunting.

Slightly less egregious, but no less inexplicable, is Moby. I know I’m going back a bit here, but there was a time when the name Moby could signify anything at all, any style of music. He started as a straight techno guy, layering beats over the theme to Twin Peaks to score a club hit. But when he began making albums, they were diverse affairs, and not just internally. I can hardly think of any two albums as different from one another as Everything is Wrong and Animal Rights, but they came one right after another, jamming techno and ambient next to guitar-heavy electro-punk. Moby has always been willing to go in different directions, and drag his fans along with him.

Until he hit it big, of course. 1999’s Play was a mega-success, mixing his usual ambient work with a new style – dropping beats over old gospel and soul records. And it was such a successful combination that he’s just kept doing it ever since. Counting Play, 18, and the b-sides collections for each, he’s now put out four CDs worth of the same stuff. (In fact, five, if you count the album’s worth of unreleased tracks on the audio portion of the 18 B-Sides DVD.) Those who wish to hear Moby do styles other than those found on Play have been out of luck for going on six years, and the sales reflect a growing ennui.

Those people could, of course, move from the M section to the V section of their record store and buy the new Voodoo Child album Baby Monkey. That is, if they hear about it. Voodoo Child is Moby, naturally, and Baby Monkey is exactly the kind of chilly techno album he used to make, back when he used to specialize in electronic music for the masses. There is nothing forbidding about this album, nothing insular. It’s just a series of great grooves, and if you remember “First Cool Hive” fondly (it appeared in the movie Heat, as well as on Everything is Wrong), you will like this.

Moby has said that recording this under the name Voodoo Child helped in its creation – he could concentrate on the music and not worry about the singles and video promotion that, these days, surround a new Moby release. Which means, unfortunately, that Moby is in a place where his fame prevents him from doing what he wants artistically, but it also seems to indicate that he’s lost faith in his audience. Millions of people supported Play, and by not releasing anything under his own name in six years that isn’t a direct descendent (if not a direct copy) of Play, Moby seems to be saying that those people won’t make the leap to a different sound. Even one he’s previously given them.

And yes, people bought Play, but they also lapped up Mobysongs, his best-of disc, and it was full of music just like this. If you buy Everything is Wrong, or the Move EP, you’re going to hear exactly the kind of thing that’s on Baby Monkey. You’ve got superb beats, ambient arrangements, sweeping synthesizers, and more than an hour of gorgeous electronica. There’s nothing un-Moby about it, so releasing it under another name seems a bit silly.

So while you’re digging through the record store looking for the Matthew Sweet album with the Japanese title and the funny cartoon drawings, don’t forget to go to the V section for the new Moby album. You see my point? I have nothing against artists choosing to express themselves in any way (or under any name) they choose, of course, but I think it’s a shame when good music goes unheard, for any reason. And when it seems like the artist in question doesn’t want you to find or hear his album, well, that sort of thing can put off people who would otherwise enjoy it.

I admit that this is a wobbly thesis, and I’m not sure I buy all of it, but I just wanted to see if I could make it work. How’d I do?

Next week, British pop and the sophomore slump.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I had to make sure, so I checked.

“Hey Gary,” I said, speaking to my former roommate and frequent traveling companion.

“Yeah?”

“I hope this isn’t a stupid question,” I said, “but this airport we’re in, it wouldn’t by any chance be moving back and forth right now, would it?”

“No it wouldn’t,” Gary replied. Damn. So it was just me, then.

That was Sunday. It’s Wednesday now, and since then, all manner of formerly motionless places have somehow begun rocking hither and thither, sometimes imperceptibly and sometimes in great sloping lurches. The airport, the car we took from the airport, the house in which I grew up, the houses of friends, all of them have been swaying to and fro, and I’m starting to get tired of it.

That’s what I get for spending a week at sea, of course, aboard a floating hotel called the Dawn Princess. It took a day or two for my equilibrium to catch up to the rocking motion of the boat upon the sea, but once it did, walking along the decks became just like walking on dry land. I should have guessed that when I finally did return to dry land, it would take a similar amount of time for me to adjust to a ground that does not move beneath my feet. I didn’t get seasick, but I have felt oddly landsick since my return.

Life aboard a cruise ship is, sadly, not meant for the likes of me. I don’t swim, I don’t drink, I don’t gamble and I don’t buy useless shiny crap, so I’m quite obviously not the target market for all of the big boat’s major activities. Still, I managed to have a great time, mostly due to the sweet presence of 70-plus-degree weather all week. The islands we visited (St. Thomas, St. Kitts, Grenada, Isla Margarita in Venezuela, and Aruba) were all fascinating, especially Aruba with its miles-long natural bridge made of coral. I read five books while sunning myself on the decks as well, so it was all good. A very relaxing seven days.

And the wedding, of course. My mom got married on Monday, our second day at sea, in the ship’s games room. They took the card tables out, brought a lace archway in, and called it a wedding chapel. The surroundings were symbolic of the refreshingly lighthearted nature of the ceremony, presided over by a St. Thomas official from Texas named Sam. He stopped the wedding several times for stand-up comedy routines. One of those involved his assertion that the new family unit formed that day contained “two sons.” My sister and I looked at each other, certain that my mother had failed to tell us something rather important, until Sam looked a bit closer at Emily and ascertained that she is, indeed, female. Funny stuff.

Anyway, man and wife, blah blah blah. It all went swimmingly, and everyone involved seemed to have fun. And here we are, back in the usual groove, with me facing the daunting prospect of locating gainful employment, again, for the third year in a row. I just hope the world stops swaying drunkenly before I have to go on job interviews. Might make that process a bit harder if I’m still walking into walls and stuff.

* * * * *

I hinted last column that I was going to try a massive house-cleaning project this time, hacking my way through the worthy records from last year that I didn’t get to in this space, for one reason or another. I hung on to that plan all the way through Tuesday, when, after taking swing after swing at it, I discovered a couple of things. First, there are way too many records from 2003 that I didn’t review. I was planning on devoting a paragraph or two each to 36 of them, in two installments, this time. That’s too many to cover with any depth.

Second, I realized that the 50-word reviews I was churning out were boring. And third, that 36 of those reviews one after the other would be pretty much unreadable. I was putting myself to sleep, and whenever you do that, as a writer, you’ve got an issue. Adding to my decision to retire that silly idea, I read Nick Hornby’s wonderful Songbook, in which he does what I’ve been trying to do for years and makes it look easy. The book is a series of essays, each concerning one song that Hornby loves. And I realized that if he can devote three whole pages to Ben Folds’ “Smoke,” for example, or Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” then trying to squeeze 36 small reviews into one tiny space is hopelessly reductive.

But I did take a couple of swings at it, like I said, and I did end up with the 36 ignored albums I think you should have heard last year (especially if you’ve liked these bands’ previous work), so in the interest of sating the curiosity that I hope exists, here’s the list, in alphabetical order:

Aphex Twin’s 26 Mixes for Cash, Basement Jaxx’s Kish Kash, Harry Connick Jr.’s Other Hours and Harry for the Holidays, the second Cush spiritual EP, Death Cab for Cutie’s wonderful Transatlanticism, the self-titled Deftones album, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones’ three-disc set Little Worlds, Guster’s winsome Keep It Together, the Innocence Mission’s Befreinded, Jars of Clay’s Furthermore and Who We Are Instead, Living Colour’s messy Collideoscope, Lyle Lovett’s boot-scootin’ My Baby Don’t Tolerate, Dave Matthews’ solo debut Some Devil, the self-titled new Mavericks album, Sarah McLachlan’s subtle Afterglow, John Mellencamp’s American folk-blues album Trouble No More, Ministry’s Animositisomina, and Moby’s 18 B-Sides, complete with exhaustive DVD.

Oh, and Beth Orton’s b-sides collection The Other Side of Daybreak, Our Lady Peace’s live record, Pearl Jam’s rarities collection Lost Dogs (and what does it say about a band like Pearl Jam when their rarities collection is better than most of their albums?), A Perfect Circle’s surprising Thirteenth Step, Primus’ EP Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People, Rage Against the Machine’s live album, Seal IV, Sepultura’s Roorback (but only if it comes packaged with the awesome Revolusongs EP), South’s excellent With the Tides, The Stills’ debut Logic Will Break Your Heart, the Strawmen’s Saving Faded Dreams (featuring past and present members of the 77s), Tourniquet’s Where Moth and Rust Destroy, Type O Negative’s Life is Killing Me, Vertical Horizon’s kinda disappointing Go, Vida Blue’s jammin’ The Illustrated Band, and the Weakerthans’ witty Reconstruction Site.

I do have small capsule reviews of each of the above either written or planned out, so if you’d like to read some of them, let me know which ones you’re interested in and I’ll e-mail them to you. Otherwise, though it pains me to let so many good albums go undiscussed, I’m putting this whole idea to bed. Let’s hope I do better this year so that I’m not forced to make a list like this again…

* * * * *

Ani Difranco might be the most restless artist working today.

There’s very little that needs to be said about her origins, and about where she’s brought her sound and career. She’s the only major artist (depending on your definition, of course) who made her own way – she’s never released an album on any other label than her own Righteous Babe Records, and she’s supported her career in a strictly grass-roots manner, touring endlessly and self-promoting tirelessly. Nearly 15 years after her debut, this self-wrought career path has led her to a place from which she can do anything she wants. If she wanted to fill her next record with Sri Lankan yodeling and ukelele solos, she could, and no one could tell her not to.

All of which would mean nothing if Difranco weren’t a) a terrific singer and songwriter, b) a terrific record-maker, and c) an artistically restless soul. She’s made undeniably great albums, like Out of Range and Little Plastic Castle, and she could probably carve out a whole career full of traditionally excellent records, but that’s not the way she thinks. Difranco is on a journey, and she’s more than willing to make jarring, experimental collections along the way if she thinks they will help her get somewhere else.

Recently Difranco arrived at a plateau with her fantastic double-disc set Revelling/Reckoning and its follow-up, last year’s Evolve. She’d taken her music in a jazz-folk direction, mastering delightfully dissonant horn arrangements along the way, and the arrival point easily justified experimental works like Up Up Up Up Up Up. As one can see by looking through her catalog, though, it’s a pattern she’s repeated – try something new, get it right, move on and evolve.

That’s a pattern that leaves bizarre, disheveled albums in its wake, however, and with this week’s release of Educated Guess, her 18th, we’re in the experimental phase again. Where her previous few records have been loaded with musicians, from her usual touring band to a huge horn section, Educated Guess is all Ani. She’s decided to return to her DIY roots, playing all the instruments and producing the disc herself – all analog, I might add. But if you read that as a sign that the old kinetic folk-punk is back, you’re in for a disappointment.

Difranco hasn’t altered her writing style to match her recording techniques here, so what you have is an acoustic jazz-folk album that sounds just a mite unfinished. There are no percussion instruments of any kind, for one thing, which only adds to the album’s feeling of disconnected meandering, and where there should be horns, Difranco has added high-pitched backing vocals in dissonant progressions. It’s an odd mix, devoid of perceptible beats and melody lines, and full of moaning and seemingly off-key scat singing. As an album, this thing seems to fall apart as you listen to it.

Give it a chance, though, and some of Difranco’s choices may surprise you. She finds a loping rhythm of sorts on “Bliss Like This,” brings in hints of her Reckoning sound on “Animal,” and concludes with a dissonant winner called “Bubble.” Throughout, the oddly slack sound of her detuned guitar, coupled with the falsetto vocal accents that just don’t seem to match up as often as they should, is grating. Yet given a few listens, it sounds right – like old Sonic Youth albums, this one takes some getting used to.

Lyrically, Difranco is in the land of broken relationships again after a brief stopover in political country. This is her most poetry-influenced album since Not a Pretty Girl – four whole tracks are recited, not sung, including a feminist rant called “Grand Canyon” that refers to the movement as “the coolest f-word ever.” The lyrics are typically soul-baring, but this time they seem a little undercooked – an obvious metaphor like “Origami” could have used a few more drafts, for instance. The political statements on Educated Guess shine brighter than the emotional ones, especially this bit from “Animal”: “There’s this brutal imperial power that my passport says I represent, but it will never represent where my heart lies, only vaguely where it went.”

Still, this is a difficult listen, and a hard album to defend musically. It almost sounds like, in her desire to produce something singlehandedly, she’s released her demos. Most of these songs would be improved by the addition of instruments and arrangements, although it’s also fair to say that most of them would be improved by stronger composition. Difranco has done some impressive things tonally on this album, making certain guitar melodies work when they shouldn’t, but that’s no substitute for good, well-written songs, and for the first time in a while, she’s failed to deliver more than a handful of those.

But hey, she’s on a journey, and the most important thing is where she goes from here. The best part about Ani Difranco is that she’s willing to surrender completely to her art, and follow where it leads her. Based on her track record, there’s little doubt that she’ll eventually arrive somewhere special when this particular leg of her trip is done. But ask her what that arrival point might sound like, and I’d bet that even Difranco couldn’t tell you. The best she can do at this point is make an educated… well, you know.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m currently ringing in the new year with a bout of strep throat. Basically, swallowing anything, including my own saliva, feels like trying to choke down good-sized rocks, and I haven’t eaten, slept or spoken in more than two days. My energy flags without warning, so be prepared for a thoroughly minor entry in the tm3am canon this week.

I was thinking about taking the week off, but I can’t, because I’m taking next week. My mother’s getting married, and because she’s my mother, and she never does anything small, she’s scheduled the wedding to coincide with a week at sea on board a huge cruise liner. So from Sunday to Saturday next week I’ll be out in the middle of the ocean, cut off from civilization. Who knows what catastrophes could occur while I’m gone? The thought of seven days without an internet connection is already driving me batty.

So that’s next week. I was going to launch into my massive clean-up project this week, doing capsule reviews of everything I bought and didn’t review last year, but my illness really prevents me from concentrating on more than one thought at a time, so I had to narrow it down to one. Thankfully, though, the first big release of 2004 hit on Tuesday, and also thankfully, it didn’t take too many spins through for me to come to some coherent conclusions about it, so here goes.

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Phantom Planet seems to be bent on surprising me at every turn.

First, I refused to get into them, simply because their drummer was the kid from Rushmore, Jason Schwartzman, and I couldn’t stomach these actor vanity projects like 50 Odd Foot of Grunts taking label contracts and shelf space away from more deserving acts without a marquee name in their ranks. It didn’t help when I found out that singer Alexander Greenwald was in Donnie Darko as well – nothing like a whole band full of actors to make me put the Visa card back in my pocket.

But then I bought The Guest, their second album, and it blew me away. Here was a perfectly constructed pop album, full of memorable songs, performed with a real sense of classic pop history that I’d found sorely lacking in the efforts of Phantom Planet’s peers. I liked it so much that I named it my third favorite album of 2002, slotting it only behind Beck and Wilco. It’s simply an extraordinary album, made even more so by the young age of its creators.

And then I saw them live, and was surprised again. I was hoping for a pop show, and I got a noise-o-rama. On stage, the quintet is a loping, feedback-laced force of nature, trampling all its greater melodic instincts in a barrage of thundering chaos. Familiar songs took on new guises as sloppy explosions, and the old adage that everything should be louder than everything else was followed to the letter. The Phantom Planet I saw live reminded me of a garage band trying to cover The Guest, and missing the nuances in favor of power. But they were fun, at least.

The surprises keep coming with the new album, out this week. Phantom Planet, in keeping with the tradition of using self-titled albums as reinventions, sounds like that garage band I saw on stage. It’s raw, loud, propulsive, thudding, and almost completely lacking in everything I liked about The Guest. The first three songs in particular just steamroller over everything the band used to be, replacing sweetness with angular, jagged fury. It’s a complete reintroduction. It’s also a complete mess.

Okay, that’s a mite unfair, I’ll grant. One skill I need to learn as a reviewer is to discuss the album the band made, as opposed to the album I wish they’d made, especially when the album I wish they’d made is one they previously released. Phantom Planet has its charms, and I’ll get into that in a minute, but I want to make one thing absolutely clear – if you liked The Guest for its delightful melodies and its pure sense of pop, you will not like this album. The two have virtually nothing in common. Clear? I mean, don’t let me stop you, of course, but don’t say I didn’t warn you, either.

Phantom Planet comes crashing in from the very beginning, with the explosive drums of “The Happy Ending,” and by the time it allows you to catch your breath, you’re on track four, “1st Things 1st.” The album is almost punk in a way – it’s 35 minutes long, and only one of the 11 songs breaks four minutes, and that one only by one second. It compensates for its unfinished songwriting and sound by jamming the songs together into a continuous burst. Only when you get to the end do you ask, “That’s it?”

While The Guest was chock full of hummable tunes that took up residence in your skull, Phantom Planet is mostly made up of the inverse – songs which make a beeline out your ear without even stopping over in your short-term memory. The songs hardly have melodies at all, choruses are shouted rather than sung, and everything is sacrificed on the altar of raw guitar power. But if you can deal with all that, the album does rock, in its way. (I should mention that Schwartzman is no longer with the band, but that doesn’t seem to matter much – he played on half of this album anyway, and Greenwald, as before, wrote all of the songs.)

The better moments here come when Greenwald leads his band away from the furious noise they seem to enjoy creating so much. “You’re Not Welcome Here” is just as powerful as the short punkers, even though it’s this album’s “Turn, Smile, Shift, Repeat” – slow and brooding. The second half of the album is more interesting than the first, especially the ’80s-sounding “Knowitall” and the U2-style atmospherics of closer “The Meantime.” Even those songs, though, fall victim to the jarring production.

It’s difficult to describe this album as anything but a step back. The Guest was such a revelation, and even though I’m sure that the Clash influences here come from the same pure fan place as the Beatles references on the previous album, Phantom Planet pales in comparison. The best way to enjoy this record is to think of it as the debut of a completely different band, but even that approach has its problems, at least in my case – this new incarnation isn’t a band I’d have much interest in sticking with. If I buy another Phantom Planet album, it will be because of The Guest, not this record. Which might be the most damning thing I can say about it – by itself, Phantom Planet would never have made me a fan.

* * * * *

Next week, I’m in the Caribbean. Hope you don’t miss me too much. On the horizon are reviews of new albums by Ani Difranco, Matthew Sweet, Starflyer 59, Elbow, Indigo Girls, and a massive 4-CD box set of rarities from the Cure. Now I’m going to go take some antibiotics and lie down.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

God, what a year it’s been.

It moved simultaneously faster than light and slower than dirt. It was, simultaneously, the worst year in recent memory as far as my personal life goes, but somehow ended up one of the best years I can recall for music. I’ve taken up too many column inches this year with my own heartbreak and despair, and at this point, I’ve already said good riddance to 2003 in my mind, so why repeat that here? It’s better to focus the last column of the year on the positive aspects of the past 12 months, artistically speaking, and I can think of no better way to accomplish this than with my annual Year-End Top 10 List.

Honestly, it wasn’t until I was compiling this list that I realized what a banner year we’ve had as far as good new music goes. Most of the 10 albums on my list have, with one notable exception, slipped beneath the radar of the mainstream music media, but having to dig and discover treasure doesn’t make it any less valuable. At one point, my honorable mentions numbered more than double those albums in my list – I’ve rectified that, of course, but it demonstrates just how much good stuff found its way out this year.

Of course, there is a downside, and as usual, it’s my increasingly irritating rules. I know, they’re self-imposed and can easily be self-repealed, but I still think they’re valuable, even considering the growing number of great records they force me to exclude every year. I’ve pared the rules down to the following: Only new, original studio albums released between the first of January and the 31st of December are eligible. That sounds easy enough, but it leads to some conundrums, as you shall see.

Most distressingly, once again my favorite album of the year has been disqualified. Last year it was Ben Folds Live, and the same rule (no live albums) keeps Jeff Buckley’s mesmerizing, captivating, altogether superhuman Live at Sin-E from topping the list. But take it from me – music in 2003 got no better than this album. If you’ve heard that perhaps this Buckley guy was pretty good, but you’ve never understood why, even after hearing “Last Goodbye,” people talk about him like some mythic being, then you have to hear this. Two hours, one guy, one guitar, and one indescribable, spirit-touching voice.

Why isn’t it atop the list if it’s the best of the year? Well, it was recorded in 1993, and four tracks from it actually preceded Buckley’s 1994 debut, Grace, as the original Live at Sin-E EP. Put simply, it’s not new, even though we’re just now hearing most of it. It’s also live, and it’s additionally made up mainly of covers. The songs are interpreted and reinvented by Buckley, it’s true, but the original compositions were not, by and large, his. These rules are important – they keep the likes of Frank Sinatra off this list every year.

They’re also going to keep Johnny Cash off this list this year, unfortunately, but he should be used to it by now. His Unearthed box set, compiled before his death but released posthumously, is far and away one of the best sets of studio recordings I heard this year. Like all things Cash, it’s mostly filled with interpretations of others’ songs, which doesn’t disqualify it as art, but it does prevent it from living up to the criteria of new, original studio albums.

The word “albums” caused me some consternation this year as well. Almost as a rule, I don’t include EPs or mini-albums in this list, no matter how amazing they are. What I didn’t count on is the unfortunate tendency this year to cleave albums in two, calling the result EPs. For instance, Ryan Adams would likely have garnered an honorable mention for his Love Is Hell, had it been released whole. Instead, his record company released it in two halves, neither one of which could stand on its own.

Ben Folds also shot himself in the foot this year, as far as this list goes. His planned trilogy of EPs was truncated to a duology, but had he combined Speed Graphic and Sunny 16 into one 10-song document, he’d have had a decent shot at the top 10. But that’s all right – we’ll probably see Folds in this space next year, when he delivers his full-length album.

I know that in the era of downloadable singles and I-Pods, such concerns about format must seem quaint, but I, for one, will mourn the impending death of the album. Already we’re seeing bands take to the internet to release single after single, and if they do make a hard-copy album at all, the result sounds like what it is – a collection of songs that were never meant to sit together. I’m a believer in the complete album statement, and the above rule strongly reflects that. A solid disc, from beginning to end, should be the goal of any musical artist, and I like to reward those who can carry that off for extended running times. Soon the album-length statement as we know it will be gone, but here at my corner of the web, we’re going to celebrate it while it’s here.

Which brings me to the honorable mentions. I think there are more Number 11s this year than any in recent memory, and most are excluded from the list for the tiniest of reasons. Everything I’m about to list from here on out is worth a listen, if not a purchase. As I said, it was an extraordinary year, and here are several extraordinary works that back me up:

Near the top of the list must be Blur’s Think Tank, the first of our #11s. While there are certainly some bum tracks here (“Crazy Beat,” “We’ve Got a File On You”), the majority of Think Tank is given over to some of the warmest electro-pop you’re likely to hear. It’s odd that atop mechanical backdrops, Damon Albarn delivers one of his warmest vocal performances to date. It’s a winning synthesis of the metallic and the organic, and perhaps the sweetest and saddest album Blur has made.

Radiohead finally delivered on their own promise again with Hail to the Thief, their first collection of actual songs since 1997. Among them is “Scatterbrain,” one of the most haunting works of the year, but the remainder of the album is uncharacteristically excellent as well. At times they even sound like a band again, one that perhaps remembers how great Radiohead used to be. Thief doesn’t scale the heights the band once did with apparent ease, but at least it finds them looking at the right mountain and judging the distance again.

Mark Eitzel should be on this list, but I can’t allow it. His The Ugly American is fantastic, a collection of older Eitzel songs performed with Greek musicians who add surprising depth and emotion. And Eitzel found reserves of emotion within his voice as well – he sounds better here than he has in years. Sadly, it’s still a collection of older songs, not new ones, and hence is ineligible. But it’s overwhelmingly wonderful just the same.

OutKast struck a blow for ambition and artistry with the world of hip-hop with their double-disc extravaganza Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. I heard fewer rap albums this year than usual, mostly because what I heard all sounded the same, but Big Boi’s half of this record easily outdoes everything I encountered. And Andre 3000… well, what can I say about a guy who wants to be Prince, George Clinton and Al Green all at once? His half is a mind-boggling mess that solidifies OutKast’s position as the most creative rap outfit currently performing.

I missed Ester Drang’s wonderful Goldenwest two years ago, and while they didn’t quite top it with this year’s shorter, more direct Infinite Keys, they made an album of dreamy pop that rises above most of their contemporaries. I say most because one of them landed at number 10, after much consideration and flip-flopping. Suffice it to say that my final decision is a lot less final in my mind than here in print, and should anyone like Infinite Keys better than my number 10 choice, I wouldn’t blame you a bit. It’s a terrific, powerful little record.

Which brings us to Warren Zevon. We said goodbye to Zevon this year, but not before he crafted his final aloha, a rollicking yet tender little album called The Wind. Much like George Harrison’s Brainwashed last year, I find myself unable to adequately judge The Wind as an album, so wrapped up in the emotions of its finality is every song. “Keep Me In Your Heart” makes me cry almost every time, though, and that alone is worthy of an honorable mention. As an album, I don’t know where it fits, but as the final farewell from cynical, hard-bitten Warren Zevon, it’s pretty well perfect.

Okay, enough of my babble. Let’s see the list:

#10. Grandaddy, Sumday.

Why the Flaming Lips get all the ink, I’ll never know. Grandaddy treads the same terrain – atmospheric pop full of quirky beauty, and concerning mechanical failure as a metaphor for human decay. The thing is, Jason Lytle and his band do this sort of thing so much better than Wayne Coyne and his. Sumday was almost released on two discs, six tracks apiece, and while the opening six blend together in a strummed blur, the final tracks explode the sound into brilliant colors. There’s almost no better closing trilogy this year than the three wonderamas that conclude this album. Sumday makes Yoshimi look like the work of clever amateurs, so infused with real feeling and melodic grace is Grandaddy’s sound. This is a work of wonder.

#9. Cerberus Shoal, Chaiming the Knoblessone.

I’m dreading having to try to explain the appeal of this thing again, so unsuccessful was I last time. The Shoal has recently reinvented itself, parting ways with three members and taking on three more, but they couldn’t have made the transition sound any more natural and complete than they have here. Knoblessone is the first full-length from the new lineup, and it’s a fully formed flower of a sound. This is where the Beatles meet the beat poets meet the prog-rockers meet the avant-garde. There’s no explaining a programmatic beast like “Story #12 From the Invisible Mountain Archive” or a sweet melodic meander like “Sole of Foot of Man.” What can I say? This is a slow-burning genius, an album so bizarre that it sounds exactly right on first listen and only deepens from there.

#8. BT, Emotional Technology.

Brian Transeau finally made his masterpiece. This is the album that combines his fascination with the technological and the organic, the whirring of machines and the soul of the human. It’s not a techno album, it’s not a pop album, it’s a perfect synthesis of the two without sacrificing either one. This is what all those Delirium albums should have sounded like. Here are explosive beats and basslines, sweet vocals, strummed guitars and string quartets, and everything is processed, folded, spindled and mutilated into something new. Here is one of the finest examples of genre-destroying in quite some time, and one hell of a fine listen to boot.

#7. The Alarm, In the Poppy Fields.

I will admit two things. First is my heavy bias towards the Alarm – I grew up with them, and have always thought of them as one of the best bands on Earth. Second is my love for sprawling, ambitious works, and you can’t get much more sprawling and ambitious than Poppy Fields – 54 new tracks spread out over five CDs. It’s the first Alarm album since 1991, and even if three-fourths of the band is different, the voice and vision still belong to Mike Peters, and he brings his trademark passion to all three and a half hours of this thing. Poppy Fields is an achievement U2 wishes they could still make, a sterling statement of purpose from a guy who’s never wavered in his commitment to soaring, beautiful, anthemic rock and roll. Here’s a whole bunch of it, and it’s all worth hearing and treasuring.

#6. Supergrass, Life on Other Planets.

Beck dreams of being this good at this sort of thing. Supergrass is a walking cultural blender, a mixture of influences so deep and wide that the only recourse is to make use of all of them, all at once. But Planets goes deeper than that – the individual influences sound vintage here. If the bass and vocal lines are supposed to recall Lou Reed, then they do, even if the synth part is ELO and the drum beat is pure punk. That they fuse these disparate sounds in the service of some great, fun songs elevates the album from sonic experiment to work of pop magic.

#5. Travis, 12 Memories.

Let’s face it, Travis is pretty much universally written off as a lightweight band. Up ’til now, they could most accurately be described as “pleasant.” So what a stunning surprise to find an album this muscular, this punchy, from these wishy-washy Brits. 12 Memories practically explodes with newfound force, and at times it feels like showing off – “Look what we just found out we can do!” If Britpop is dead, then someone forgot to tell these guys, because they’ve just made an album of superb loud pop songs, played with all the fire of a brand new band.

#4. Over the Rhine, Ohio.

If I have a sentimental favorite here, it’s probably this one. With often minimal instrumentation, Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist strike right through the artifice and pretension of the world and touch the soul. Ohio is more than 90 minutes long, weighs in at 21 tracks, and feels all too brief. The songs are deceptively simple, yet they never stand in the way of the emotional connection Bergquist is searching for, both vocally and lyrically. There isn’t a moment on Ohio that isn’t pure, heartfelt, open and perfect. Hearing Bergquist sing “Changes Come” while Detweiler accompanies her on mournful, longing piano is the closest anything on this list came to a spiritual experience this year. And the rest of this album is similarly extraordinary.

#3. Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers.

The Grammy people get around their ignorance of new music by awarding a Best New Artist nomination to a band that, during a certain year, established their “public identity.” Fountains of Wayne got that nod this year, despite nearly a decade in the biz, because of “Stacy’s Mom,” a first-rate novelty tune, but if the Rachel Hunter video is their public identity, then the public is dead wrong about them. Anyone buying Welcome Interstate Managers and expecting an LP full of “Stacy’s Mom” will likely be surprised by the warmth and depth of the record, as well as its impeccable craft. Fountains go after emotions and explore characters that other artists disregard – the small-town guy longing for his famous classmate in “Hackensack,” the quarterback who suddenly discovers he has “All Kinds of Time” – and they do it with a cleverness that transcends novelty. With “Valley Winter Song” they wrote one of the year’s loveliest tunes, and with “Hey Julie” one of its catchiest. And they also delivered the most fun you’ll have in three minutes this year with “Bright Future in Sales.” If not for the subpar final four songs, this nearly perfect pop album might have been even higher on this list, something no mere novelty band could ever accomplish. Welcome Interstate Managers is a brilliant delight.

#2. Bruce Cockburn, You’ve Never Seen Everything.

For months on end, Cockburn had the lock on the top spot with this devastating, fantastic record, and even now I’m not sure I’m making the right choice. This is easily one of the most complete artistic statements of Cockburn’s 30-plus-year career, from the mission statement “Tried and Tested” to the jazz-tinged venom of “Trickle Down” to the absolute bleak horror of the mostly spoken title track. At its heart, it’s about finding hope in a terrifying world, and it never shies away from depicting that world in all its chilling detail. Cockburn has been everywhere, and he has a global worldview we sorely need in Bush’s America, but more than that, he has a master’s touch with words and melody that brings that worldview into impressive focus. This album is a grand summation from Bruce Cockburn, and one of the most important and unjustly ignored albums of the year. Moreover, it’s one of the most musically captivating, wrapping you up in its carefully controlled power. It’s a masterwork from a guy with nothing more to prove, and that makes it all the more stunning.

Which brings us to the top, and the source of most of my consternation. I swear, it was almost a tie, and the top two positions switched places often enough that I can almost consider it an even draw. It came down to which one pushed my personal buttons more, and even though Cockburn’s record outdoes the winner for social conscience and lyrical power, I’m always going to go where the melody is, and no one delivered better melodies than this guy:

#1. Rufus Wainwright, Want One.

I’ve been watching Wainwright since his debut, certain that he would one day make a magnificent album. I honestly didn’t expect one this good so soon, however. Want One sparkles with confidence and majesty. It’s a pop album in the purest sense of the term – Wainwright remembers when pop referred to the likes of Gershwin and Berlin. This set of 14 songs packs more surprises and delights for a melody addict like myself than anything I’ve heard in years, all recorded with a sense of grandeur and drama missing from just about all pop music these days. It’s all topped with Wainwright’s voice, an even-toned powerhouse that he’s honed into a graceful instrument. Wainwright makes writing great songs sound incredibly easy, as if most other songwriters are just being lazy. As I said in the original review, any discussion of the year’s best songs would be dominated by this album, and “I Don’t Know What It Is” leads the list as the best single song I heard this year.

In the end, it came down to one tiny moment, though. There’s a bit near the end of “Beautiful Child” when, after three minutes of crescendo, all the other instruments (including guitars, drums and horns) drop out, leaving nothing but Wainwright’s lead vocal and an ocean of his multi-tracked backing chorale. It’s like that moment when you go over the first hill on a roller coaster, a genuinely spine-tingling instant of giddy drama. That’s the sort of thing that makes all this searching for good music worthwhile, and Wainwright was the only one to provide me one of those moments this year. That edged him over Cockburn, but the rest of this dazzling album put him in position to be edged in the first place. Whatever he does from here out is irrelevant – he’s carved out a permanent place in the pantheon with this record. Regardless, I can’t wait to see where he goes from here.

I’m writing this on the last day of this stupid year. I’m hoping that 2004 is kinder to the people I love. Good riddance, 2003. Get the fuck out of here.

Next week, I begin rectifying some glaring omissions from the past 12 months. Year four, here we go. Thanks for hanging in there this year, and for joining me for the next one. I’m grateful for you all.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

A friend of mine e-mailed me this week to tell me her father died. A couple of days after that, another friend called me to tell me she just got back from her grandmother’s funeral. There’s something unnatural about the sheer amount of death we’ve seen this year. I’ve written far too much about it in the past few months, and I’m tired of having to. Only two weeks until we can bid this awful year goodbye.

But it’s fitting, somehow, that this, my final new review of 2003, is about Johnny Cash. Cash was another victim of 2003, passing away in September at age 71. I’m finding as I arrange my thoughts for this piece that, just as I have no authoritative voice on death, I have no similar voice on Johnny Cash. His loss seems impossible – it’s almost like his legend and his presence transcend the idea of a frail human form to house them.

There just aren’t enough superlatives for Cash, but here are a few anyway. Some may call him a singer, and in fact he referred to himself as such, but what he brought to the songs he graced with his voice was so much more. Cash inhabited songs, like few others could do – he brought depth, power and layers of meaning and feeling to virtually any lyric, simply by being Johnny Cash. The great Cash songs always centered around the same conflict evident in his persona – the troubled, often violent man crawling his way along the road to redemption. Cash lived this so completely that one can feel the eternal struggle in every word he sang.

Cash was always surprising people. This was the guy, after all, who found some of his most receptive audiences behind the walls of prisons. One can lazily type him as a country singer, given that he was a member of the Grand Old Opry, but he lived far beyond the limits of genre restrictions. He was folk, rock, pop, blues, and any other idiom he chose, but everything he did came out sounding like Johnny Cash, labels be damned.

And leave it to senior-citizen Cash to save his biggest surprise for the end. Certainly no one expected the kind of creative and popular career revival Cash has seen in the past decade. It’s largely thanks to a remarkable partnership with American Records honcho Rick Rubin, best known for his work with the likes of Slayer and the Beastie Boys. Rubin has a knack for producing artists so that the result sounds definitive, as if he can isolate and replicate the way those musicians always wished they could sound. His plan for Cash was astoundingly simple – get Johnny, an acoustic guitar, a microphone and a bunch of songs together in his living room, record a stark live document, and then promote it with all the respect Cash’s legend deserves.

Thus began the American Recordings series, an amazing set of four albums that cast Cash as an interpreter of just about anything. In addition to old blues and gospel standards, Cash covered such unlikely sources as Soundgarden, Danzig, U2 and Sting on these records, with mostly incredible results. His version of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt” gave him his first bona fide hit in ages, scored him several award nominations (fueled by a raw and beautiful video by Mark Romanek), and made him stunningly relevant to a modern audience. In Cash’s hands, the song was transformed from merely heartfelt to positively shattering, a collapse of worlds in three minutes.

Cash’s death came mid-project. He and Rubin had been working on the fifth American record, and Cash had finished demos of roughly 50 songs. Additionally, Rubin had assembled a box set of outtakes and new recordings to celebrate 10 years of their partnership, and he had just sent the CDs to Cash for review when he succumbed. That box set is called Unearthed, and while it was never intended as a memorial, it serves as a fitting capstone, not just to the last 10 years of Cash’s creative revitalization, but to his grand career as a whole.

Unearthed is divided into five CDs and housed in a gorgeous cloth-bound book design in an embossed slipcase. Even in shape and design, it looks like a monument, and the music inside is no less monolithic. Here we have three discs of unreleased outtakes from the American sessions, a new album of spirituals and an admittedly unnecessary but still worthy compilation of the best tracks from the four American albums. All together, it’s 79 songs, and not one is not worth hearing. Everything that was ever great about Johnny Cash is represented in this box, and it’s no wonder it takes five CDs to hold it all.

Starting from the beginning: Who’s Gonna Cry is the first volume of outtakes, taken from the live acoustic sessions for American Recordings. If you liked that one, this disc is blessedly more of the same, with more of a focus on classic songs like “Long Black Veil” and “Waiting For a Train.” Cash excelled in this setting, just the man and his guitar, and it’s here that one can best hear the power of his voice. When Cash sings, it’s like hearing the voice of music itself. But the best moments are the faltering, human ones. When he gets to the title phrase, in his own “The Caretaker,” it’s chilling: “Who’s gonna cry when old John dies,” he sings, and one can’t help but think on Cash’s own mortality.

Cash’s second American album, Unchained, hooked him up with an ideal backing band – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Though several other musicians, including the Red Devils, make contributions, it’s the Heartbreakers who bring the best stuff to Trouble In Mind, the second disc here. The emphasis is on blues rock, and Lord, are these performances amazing. Just a few highlights: Carl Perkins guests on Chuck Berry’s “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man” and his own “Everybody’s Trying to Be My Baby,” Cash stomps his way through an unadorned reading of Steve Earle’s “Devil’s Right Hand,” he reinvents Neil Young’s signature “Heart of Gold,” and he makes Jimmie Rodgers’ “T For Texas” his own.

The most affecting of these recordings, however, has to be his duet with his late wife, June Carter Cash, on his own “As Long As the Grass Shall Grow.” It’s a lovely song of eternal devotion, recorded not long before June’s death, and their two voices playing off of each other is heartbreaking. That alone is worth the price of Unearthed.

But wait, there’s more. The third volume, Redemption Songs, is the only one that feels like a selection of outtakes, so diverse is the track listing. Cash duets with the late Joe Strummer of the Clash on Bob Marley’s title tune, and if you can imagine that, you’ll have no problem with the rest of this. Cash soars on Jimmy Webb’s great “Wichita Lineman,” rocks through traditional tune “Salty Dog,” puts his stamp on Stephen Foster’s immortal “Hard Times Come Again No More,” and invites Glen Campbell to the mic for a read of “Gentle On My Mind.” Most surprising here is a stark version of “You Are My Sunshine,” which emphasizes the incredible darkness at the song’s center. That all of these tunes can exist on one CD serves as proof that typing Cash as a country artist is simple laziness.

As grand as everything that precedes it is, the capper here is disc four, My Mother’s Hymn Book. The last real album Cash completed, this is a collection of 15 hymns taken quite literally from a book owned by his mother. The versions are naked and passionate, featuring only Cash and his guitar, and it only takes one or two songs to realize that he’s singing from his very soul here, perhaps more so than on any of his previous works. Cash’s music has long been about striving for redemption, and it’s fitting that his final recordings center on that redemption, wholly and completely. This is deceptively simple, yet quite powerful stuff.

And if disc five, The Best of Cash on American, is superfluous, it also serves as a fine reminder of just how lucky we’ve been to witness this resurgence from one of America’s icons. Opening with “Delia’s Gone,” a great Cash original, the disc brings us through some of the riskier choices Cash has made recently, all of which paid off beautifully. His take on Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage” is a revelation, as are versions of U2’s “One” and Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man.” “I Hung My Head” was Sting’s attempt at writing a Johnny Cash song, so his reclaiming it here is only natural, and the result is superb. And though “The Man Comes Around” was one of the last songs Cash wrote, it’s a quintessential Johnny Cash piece, full of frightening redemption. It’s all capped with “Hurt,” which Cash turns into a meditation on mortality.

I really don’t know what else to say. Here are 79 songs that argue fairly convincingly that Johnny Cash was one of a kind, a genius interpreter with a soul 20 miles high. While it’s true that they don’t make them like they used to, they honestly never made them like Johnny Cash, and never will again. If you don’t understand how important his loss is, Unearthed is a consistently engrossing way to inform yourself. If after listening, you still don’t get it, there’s no hope. Cash leaves behind a sadder, shoddier, more artificial world than the one he knew, and even though we all still have to live in it, we have his work to remind us of a time when things mattered, people were real, and genuine redemption was difficult, eternally rewarding work.

Rest in peace, Johnny. We’ll miss you.

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Next week is Christmas, of course, so enjoy yourselves. The Year-End Top 10 List will hit on New Year’s Eve. After that, year four.

See you in line Tuesday morning… and to all a good night.