Some of you may have noticed my interest waning a little bit.

Yeah, I know you’ve noticed. Some of you have told me so. You’ve said that you can tell when I’m just going through the motions on this column, and it shows in my writing when I’m not overly thrilled about the prospect of hammering one of these babies out. (Suddenly, my mind is filled with ghastly images of someone taking a hammer to a baby – sorry, won’t use that phrase again.) And yes, I will admit to it, but I’d like to point out there are some very good reasons for this.

One of them is my lousy working situation, which will all be sorted out in three weeks when I leave for the east coast. My life is in a strange limbo land right now, complicated by my full-to-bursting work schedule. (At least I’m doing something I enjoy… oh, wait, I’m totally not.) Expect a brighter, sunnier me come mid-December.

Or at least, come January, because another factor contributing to my growing apathy is the fact that 2002 has pretty well sucked for music and for art in general. Much as this may surprise some folks, I don’t like trashing records in this column, especially records by artists I’ve formerly enjoyed. See the most recent Tori Amos review for a clear example. I love music, so naturally I want to like everything I hear. I never understood those reviewers who seem to want to despise every song that comes across their desks. Why would you even want to discuss music if you hate it so much?

I’d much prefer being able to mercilessly thrash terrible albums than what I’ve had to do throughout this year – wade through and formulate thoughts on dozens of records that haven’t moved me in the slightest. Most of what I heard in 2002 left me with an overwhelming sense of… whatever. I want my music to affect me, to nudge its way into my life and redefine everything else around it. My Top 10 List, which is only three columns away, has a bunch of good records on it, but very few great ones, and I’m trying to be excited about it, but it’s no use.

And when my life is devoid of great new music, it’s almost paralyzing. It’s an empty, deadening feeling that is only partially assuaged by digging out great old records and remembering the first time I heard them. I remember spinning the self-titled Ben Folds Five album for the first time, for instance, and jumping all over the room by the time “Jackson Cannery” was done. Or my first bone-chilling run through Tori’s Little Earthquakes, or the Choir’s Circle Slide, or even Duncan Sheik’s Phantom Moon. Little has moved me like this during the past year.

Just to illustrate, I have four full-sized reviews this time of albums that have left me with little or no real feeling towards them. They’re all good albums, and they all make me smile, but none made me dance around the room like the spazzy white guy I am, arms flailing about my air guitar. Likewise, none (well, maybe one) compelled me to sit in silent astonishment while waves of gorgeous sound broke over me. At the end of my first play-through of each of these, I noted that I liked what I’d heard, and then promptly moved on to something else.

And that’s just not what music ought to do. Great music ought to completely change your life, imprint itself upon your experiences, dig in to your central nervous system and not let go. At the very least, great music ought to fill you with the desire to hear it again, right away. As I type this, I’m on my third-ever run through of these albums, and rather than sitting back and letting the response flow through me in words, I’m brainstorming frantically for interesting things to say.

Let’s see how well I do.

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Whatever else you can say about Audioslave, it’s comforting to note that there’s no way their music could be as bad as their name.

I mean, come on. What the hell does that even mean?

It’s even more disconcerting a moniker when you realize that between them, the four members of Audioslave have released 11 albums, most of them hits. The name doesn’t bode well for a combination of musicians that’s already being met with cynicism and skepticism. You see, the interesting thing about Audioslave, besides which mentally delayed third grader gave them their name, is that the group itself just shouldn’t work.

Audioslave is the much-touted “supergroup” that mixes three parts Rage Against the Machine and one part Soundgarden. Ignoring for the moment the ideological differences between the two, one could charitably describe their approaches to music as polar opposites. Sure, they both worked within the same framework of guitars-bass-drums, but Soundgarden was all about the melody, even when it came to tricky guitar and bass countermelodies, and Rage was always about the rhythm.

So why would the three musical members of Rage (guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk) think they could replace their lead rapper Zach de la Rocha with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell? I mean, Cornell’s solo album, the poor-selling yet beautiful Euphoria Morning, was easily the most melodic, acoustic thing to ever come out of Seattle, and it even made some concessions to lite-FM radio. You know, radio? Remember de la Rocha’s thoughts on radio? “Fuck it, turn it off,” if I recall correctly.

To make a hip-hop analogy, which the Rage boys might appreciate, Audioslave on paper sounds very much like booting Chuck D. from Public Enemy and replacing him with Rob Base. It shouldn’t work. It should me more oil and water than chocolate and peanut butter. What a surprise, then, that it does work, and occasionally it works very well.

First, it’s important to note that this is not the Chris Cornell of Euphoria Morning. This is the Chris Cornell of Louder Than Love, and it’s great to hear his full-throated yowl again, especially over music this muscular. The Rage boys are still the Rage boys, but this time out they’ve discovered subtlety and texture instead of just smashing you in the face with a sledgehammer. Audioslave does exactly what I’d hoped it would do – it takes strengths from both its disparate elements. Cornell needed a band this powerful to re-amplify his terrific voice, and the Ragers needed a Beatles nut like Cornell to teach them about melody.

Admittedly, Audioslave doesn’t quite measure up to either Rage or Soundgarden at full throttle, but it sounds like a good first step. The Rage trio is obviously just learning about pop songwriting, which explains semi-banal numbers like “Like a Stone” and “I Am the Highway,” which use chords we’ve all heard in this combination before. Very occasionally, though, the band hits upon something that combines their strengths beautifully, like the closing anthem “The Last Remaining Light.”

The sound takes some getting used to, especially if you’re familiar with Rage’s work. Opener “Cochise” sounds so much like Rage that it’s almost unsettling to hear Cornell actually sing over the riff. To his credit, Cornell is not trying to be de la Rocha – the lyrics on Audioslave are more spiritual than political, especially “Light My Way,” which I hope Cornell won’t mind me calling the most Christian song released into the mainstream since the last U2 album. Cornell is typically vague throughout, but he’s got the soulful rock star thing down pat. Everything he sings sounds deep, even when it’s utter tripe.

Blessedly, Tom Morello is still Tom Morello as well. Easily the most sonically inventive guitar player to emerge in the ’90s, Morello can make his six-string sound like virtually anything. He rarely takes a solo on Audioslave, preferring to fill his sections with bizarre screeches or imitations of slide whistles. When he takes the band along on his rides, it’s impressive, especially when the trio imitates electronic instruments perfectly. Observe “Hypnotize,” one of the best tracks, which sounds so much like Depeche Mode that they could release it to radio under their name and no one would blink. Not that they’d want to do that, of course.

Overall, though, Audioslave is merely a good start, and considering how easy it would be for the members to let their agendas clash, the band may not be around long enough to fulfill its own promise. If they continue in the spirit of musical cooperation that they’ve shown here, however, then I have high hopes for future projects.

But only if they get a new name.

* * * * *

Also in need of a new name is Ours, but really, these guys actually need a complete makeover.

Just look at the front cover of their second album, Precious. It’s a hoary, gothic mix of shadows, angel feathers and pseudo-dangerous-yet-sexy imagery that just looks cheap and artificial. Seriously, you’d think Ours was some Sisters of Mercy-style goth-industrial act, and the cover of their debut, Distorted Lullabies, wasn’t much better. You’d never guess that inside awaited some intelligent, emotional songs written and sung by a true talent.

That talent is named Jimmy Gnecco, and while I guess Ours is technically a band, it’s really a showcase for Gnecco’s songs, guitar and amazing voice. Everyone remembers the first time they heard Jeff Buckley sing, and likewise, everyone who’s experienced it remembers the first time they heard Gnecco sing and thought it was Jeff Buckley. This guy’s pipes are extraordinary, and even if all he offers is a note-perfect Buckley impersonation, that alone takes more talent than is offered by a legion of MTV darlings.

Only thing is, this time out, we know what to expect from Gnecco, and Precious offers us nothing new. The effect is slightly diminished because of this, and because of a few poor numbers at the beginning of the disc. Still, I can’t overestimate the thrill of hearing Gnecco really tear into his high vocal lines – this guy has an incredible range, and impressive lung power behind it. He composes songs like Buckley did as well, making dramatic use of melody and voice. While there’s nothing really original on Precious, there’s nothing here that’s being offered anywhere else at the moment, either.

Once you get past the ill-advised cover of Lou Reed’s “Femme Fatale,” though, the disc just takes off and doesn’t come down until the end. The inarguable highlight is “If Flowers Turn,” but “Disaster In a Halo” comes very close to eclipsing it. Both these songs find Gnecco wrapping his voice around tricky yet hummable melodies, and they both have a sense of dynamic missing from most rock music these days. (In fact, missing from almost everything except Jeff Buckley’s Grace.) Closer “Red Colored Stars” is a sweet farewell, and proof that Precious was rushed together. A few more songs like the three at the end and the disc as a whole might stand up better.

Much as I want to, I can’t fault Gnecco for taking on Buckley’s sound, but the only reason I’ve mentioned it so many times in this review is that the similarities, both in sound and style, are uncanny. Still, this isn’t a skill one can develop overnight, and Gnecco is phenomenally talented. Someday he’ll develop his own style, but for now, I find that I don’t enjoy Ours less because Buckley did it first. These are very good songs, for the most part, and of course there’s that voice. Where Gnecco takes this is up to him – let’s hope that Precious is not a sign of stagnation.

* * * * *

It’s something of an international crime that the Levellers are not more well-known in the States, but what can you do. We Americans hold on to some of our best-kept secrets (Michael Roe, Peter Mulvey, Jonatha Brooke) as well, and it serves as a source of simultaneous frustration and comfort for the small group of fans that know about them.

The last three Levellers albums have been unavailable in the U.S., so the precious few stateside who’ve heard of them probably only know the Waterboys-gone-punk style of their most popular record, Levelling the Land. No doubt, that’s an amazing album, but the Levs have moved on. In 2000, they released their masterpiece, a glittering document of Beatlesque pop and stunning orchestration called Hello Pig. Some liked it, some hated it, but everyone agreed that the band had made great strides away from their fiddle-driven past.

So what do they do for an encore but erase the entire evolution and return to their roots? The recently released Green Blade Rising can best be described as a classic Levellers album – the songs are short, political and loaded with soaring fiddle lines. The whole thing almost sounds like a live recording – gone are the studio tricks of the past few records, and here again is a superb live band just bursting with energy. It’s everything everyone who hated Hello Pig would want.

But dammit, I liked where they were going. Erase-the-slate albums have never sat well with me – see R.E.M.’s Monster, for example – and the rare exception, like U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind, is refreshing largely in contrast to the crap that came before, like Zooropa and Pop. I’ve always had a problem with cutting off genuine musical growth at the roots, so to speak, and as much as I like the old Levellers albums, I really like the most recent excursions.

But whatever, you have to take what you’re given. Green Blade Rising is the best possible kind of slate-eraser – one that hearkens back to the old stuff without suffering in comparison. This album could have come out after their debut, A Weapon Called the Word, and fit nicely into the catalog. It contains a nice mix of acoustic and electric guitars, and shows off the classic Levs mix of folk and rock nicely. Best of all for old-time fans, the fiddle is back in force, up front and melodically arranged.

And the songs are pretty good, too. I dare you to get the “ba-ba-ba-ba” opening of “Wild as Angels” out of your head, and ditto for the chorus of “Aspects of Spirit.” Mark Chadwick and Simon Friend trade off on lead vocals, as usual, and Friend’s songs are haunting and subdued, especially the great “Believers.” There are two problems, however: the songs are short and slight, and there’s only 11 of them. Green Blade Rising, the band’s shortest work, clocks in at a featherweight 37 minutes, and it’s over before you know it.

Actually, that’s not true. The band made sure you know it by closing with a stunner called “Wake the World.” The title and lyrics certainly lend themselves to a trademark Levellers rave-up, but the song is performed with a hushed minimalism the band has rarely exhibited. Over little more than a simple bass line and an electric piano, Chadwick’s plaintive lyrics (“When are we going to wake the world?”) take on great depth and power. You keep expecting the song to kick in, and the genius of it is that it never does.

Bands usually only make albums like this one in hopes of recapturing their old audience, but here in the States, that’s not going to be a problem – they never had an audience to begin with. I can’t recommend Green Blade Rising as your first purchase if you’ve never heard this band, but I can’t stress enough how much this band deserves to be heard. I’m in a bit of a bind, because pound for pound, Levelling the Land is a better deal and a better introduction, and Hello Pig is a perfect indication of how much they’ve grown since. You’ve got to get those two first. Support the band by going to www.levellers.co.uk.

Despite the mild disappointment that accompanies it, Green Blade Rising is a fine effort. Its 11 songs contain not a clunker in the bunch, and more than a few sparklers. I just wish they’d quelled whatever impulse it was that influenced them to make their seventh album just like their first. Those that loved their first few records are going to love this one, too, but for those of us that admired them for pushing themselves to evolve will have to wait until album eight, I guess.

* * * * *

Which brings us to Sigur Ros, who have made the oddest and most praiseworthy of these four records. It’s also the most difficult one to intelligently discuss, since the band has effectively dismantled the reviewer’s stock stable of tricks. The band’s second album is untitled, though they swear up and down that it’s not self-titled. Most everyone is latching onto the cover design and calling it ( ). It consists of eight songs with no titles, and the booklet contains exactly one word: sigurros.com, the band’s web address. The songs are not instrumentals, but they may as well be. The band sings in Icelandic, which isn’t exactly true either: they made up their own bastardized version of Icelandic that they call Hopelandic. The only people that understand it are the band members.

So here I am, with no production credits to point out, no lyrics to analyze, and no easy way to get a handle on critiquing this work. The band obviously wants the focus on the music, not the packaging, but most reviewers I’ve checked out since buying this have focused on the fact that the band has not made it easy for them. (You know, like I’m doing now.) The choice is simple: we can talk about the bizarre choices the band made regarding song and album titles, or we can talk about the music.

The music is unlike anything you have ever heard, unless you bought Sigur Ros’ debut album. The songs are very long – none shorter than six minutes, some longer than 10, and adding up to 72 minutes all together. The album is really one shifting, beautiful song, though, and it ebbs and flows through a series of immaculately produced dirges that sound like transmissions from another world. Pianos, finely textured guitars and strange, alien voices weave together to make what could possibly be described as music in its purest form.

I say you’ve never heard anything like it, but chances are good that you’ve actually heard Sigur Ros before, because waiting at track four like a sweet surprise is the beautiful music Cameron Crowe used for the rooftop scene at the end of Vanilla Sky. That track is perhaps the most structured of the eight, and it effectively signals a transformation in the album-length song – from here on, what had previously been lighter-than-air dirges turn into increasingly more propulsive atmospheres. The sense of menace gets turned up through the powerful last track, until it sounds like someone has dumped poison into a formerly placid lake, and it’s killing everything slowly.

Of course, “slowly” is the key word here. ( ) (or whatever you want to call it, I’m sure the band doesn’t care) stays within a funereal tempo throughout, and as much as I’ve always wished a band would make an album like this, I find myself drifting by the end. The problem, I think, is that this album is a pure musical experience, and we’re all trained by years of exposure to pop radio to look for the hooks. In a culture whose motto is “don’t bore us, get to the chorus,” an album which contains no choruses at all is a bold move. It’s odd, though, that music so colorful can seem so monochromatic after more than an hour of it.

Still, if you can manage to not be intimidated by it, Sigur Ros’ new album offers an experience unlike any I’m currently aware of. This is music that bypasses all the usual ways of appreciating, and aims for a deeper level of emotional impact. And often, it hits the mark, especially on the fourth and eighth tracks. Sigur Ros is trying to achieve a certain celestial beauty, and while they may not quite get there with these lengthy soundscapes, they get high marks for even attempting a sound this unique and alien. I recommend turning off your lights and playing it at high volume, and then letting the sound linger in the air for a while when it’s over. It’s almost like coming out of sensory deprivation, fresh and alive.

* * * * *

As I mentioned, the Year-End Top 10 List is only three columns away. I’ll be filling the space in between with thoughts on local band the Bedheads, the final George Harrison album and the first studio disc from the reunited Phish. Happy Thanksgiving, all.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

For those of you keeping track, this is my 100th column. If Tuesday Morning 3 A.M. were a television show, it would be in syndication already.

So before going on, I’d like to take a moment to do something I really ought to do more often, and that’s thank all of you faithful readers who’ve supported this endeavor. I’d never do this if it weren’t fun, but there have been a few times over the last few months that wrapping my addled brain around the first sentence of whatever column I’ve decided to bang out in a given week has been a chore, and times when there are a million-and-a-half things I’d rather be doing than this time-sucking monstrosity, and the thought that hundreds of you out there actually read this thing has served as invaluable motivation.

So whether you’re in this for the music reviews and couldn’t care less about me, or you read the first two paragraphs hoping to grab a few insights into my life and skip all the artsy musical crap, I really appreciate it. I hope you’ll all be here for column 200, 500, 1,000 and beyond.

* * * * *

I am not a fan of television.

Actually, I need to rephrase that. Television is nothing more than a broadcast medium for filmed entertainment, and as such, it’s silly to blame the messenger for the often brain-sucking, pitiful and downright insulting quality of the message. The 90-10 rule applies to TV programming like it does to music and everything else: 90 percent of everything is crap.

When it comes to television, the remaining 10 percent breaks down like this: There are decent shows that exist within a proven framework, great shows that invert and subvert that framework, and excellent shows that create their own worlds whole cloth, shows that stick out amidst the vast wasteland of vapidity because they offer an experience like nothing else.

And then there is My So-Called Life.

Here was a show so far ahead of its time that the network didn’t have the slightest idea how to market it, a show so emotionally rich and resonant that it defied pat categories, a show so bewilderingly close to perfect that it was canceled after 19 episodes. Here was a show that single-handedly created its own genre – the serious teen drama – and simultaneously obliterated it, knocking down walls that other shows didn’t even know existed.

Like most trailblazing works of art, My So-Called Life left in its wake a series of embarrassingly inferior and depressingly more successful knockoffs (Party of Five, Dawson’s Creek) that took the most superficial elements of genius and pretended to be the real deal. What these shows missed entirely was that My So-Called Life, despite its title, wasn’t just a show about teenagers and their lives.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, it certainly was about Angela Chase, Rayanne Graff, Brian Krakow, Jordan Catalano and Rickie Vasquez, and all their adolescent orbits around each other. But it was also about Patty and Graham Chase, two of the most fully realized TV parents ever created, and their slowly dissolving relationship. It was also about every supporting player, even the guest stars, all of whom got to inhabit characters of breadth and scope.

And all of those characters were treated lovingly and brilliantly by one of the most talented creative teams ever to grace the small screen. All the episodes were well done, but when creator Winnie Holzman wrote the script and Scott Winant directed, the show created its own spellbinding atmosphere. The magic of the show lay in its ability to blend multiple points of view behind a theme, and Winant’s signature stylistic fingerprint – the moving-camera fade between rooms and perspectives, which he likely taught the makers of ER and American Beauty, among others – accomplished this with emotion and beauty. Aided, naturally, by the sublime music of W.G. “Snuffy” Walden.

And we can’t forget the actors, none of which have gone on to do work of this caliber in anything else. Most of the attention is lavished on the extraordinary Claire Danes, but her performance is matched and buoyed by literally everyone else on screen. I’ve always been particularly impressed with A.J. Langer’s Rayanne, and the way she manages to hide so much pain behind her explosive sparkle, but every actor does brave work, and they’re all safe in the hands of the creative team. It’s a special kind of magic when all the elements work, and it happens so rarely that whenever it does, you have to cherish it.

I know, I’m gushing, but I just received my complete My So-Called Life DVD set in the mail, and it’s like visiting with an old friend. It’s somehow sweeter, watching these discs and knowing that they were never supposed to happen, and that they do because of a few fans with an abiding love for these characters and this story. MSCL was, as I mentioned, canceled after 19 episodes due to low ratings, but slowly built up a dedicated fan base. MTV picked up the show and had a ratings smash with it, and the VHS sets sold surprisingly well. The road seemed to be paved for a complete DVD release, but no one wanted to pick up the ball and run with it.

Until my hero, Jason Rosenfeld.

I love this guy. As an employee at BMG Special Products, he sought out the fanbase at mscl.com, and laid the groundwork. After leaving BMG, he started his own company, Dry Grass Partners, and shopped the idea around, finally landing a deal with Another Universe. And then he shepherded the set towards reality, dealing with fan concerns daily and never faltering as Another Universe’s whole infrastructure seemed to collapse.

And boy, did it collapse. We were all asked to pay full price ($100) back in February, with no firm release date. And then the overcharges started, and some people were screwed to the tune of $300, with no DVD set. And then the lies started coming down from AU CEO Ross Rojek, lies about bonus material (which has yet to materialize) and exclusivity. That last one still stings – the set was promised as an exclusive, made to fan order, and as I speak, copies of it are sitting on the shelves of Best Buy, going for around 50 bucks.

But at every turn, there was Rosenfeld, posting on the message board and making sure we knew the truth, most of which directly contradicted Rojek’s statements. Jason has endured threats and suspicion, and has effectively removed himself from official dealings with the project, but there he still is, calling people and pressuring AU to refund all the overcharges. I’m one of the lucky ones – I was never overcharged, and I got my set, unlike some of the other people on the board – and I still say everyone who ordered this set owes Jason a round of drinks and a heartfelt thank you.

There’s no review here, because if you’ve ever seen the show, you don’t need me to tell you how amazing it is, and if you haven’t, nothing I can say will encapsulate it. Part of what I love about My So-Called Life is its ability to recall for me a particular period in my life, and I’m unable to overcome my heavy bias and see it apart from that. All I know is that this show makes me laugh, cry and feel more than any other piece of television I’ve ever encountered, and to have the whole run on DVD is somehow magical and otherworldly.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Roger Rees is just about to throw all the literary magazine assignments out the window, and I don’t want to miss it. Next week, a big one, I promise, with a bunch of reviews.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I remember when a new Pearl Jam album was an event.

Sure, it was during the whole Seattle craze, when any band with a bad attitude and a penchant for flannel could somehow galvanize a nation of malcontents, but really, are things much different now? We’ve got scores of “sensitive” nu-metal bands all complaining about their white suburban upbringings over poorly played guitars that sound a lot like Stone Gossard’s on Ten, and if Staind and Puddle of Mudd aren’t Seattle-style grunge acts, I’ll eat the remaining original members of Mudhoney. These guys learned everything they know from the Seattle boys, who learned everything they know from Neil Young, on and on, forever and ever, amen. The world really hasn’t changed so much.

And neither has Pearl Jam, really. I recall when their second album, Vs., was released in 1993. Man, everybody had to have this thing. The record store half a mile from my college campus held a midnight sale, and everyone from my dorm went and got in line. I mean everyone. I knew several people in several other states at the time, and most of them attended Pearl Jam record release parties at people’s houses or in dorm rooms. One girl I knew was so taken with soon-to-be-smash-hit “Daughter” that she went around one such party saying nothing but the chorus lyrics. “Don’t call me daughter,” she’d say to total strangers, and then turn her back, declaring, “Not fair to!”

Had I wanted to attempt such an experiment at the time, I doubt I could have found very many people who hadn’t heard at least some of Vs. one or two days after it came out. The same with Vitalogy, but on a slightly smaller scale, since the Seattle scene was slowly slipping southward, sucked somewhere by a sea of some more superfluous s-words. (Can you tell I’m sick today? My non-drowsy antihistamine isn’t so non-drowsy, I’ve discovered…) Once Saint Cobain ventilated his head, it was all downhill for the flannel set.

And it’s true that most of those bands have long since meandered off into the sunset, one way or another – Layne Staley’s death, Soundgarden’s split – but Pearl Jam soldiers on, and with each new record, I find it more bizarre that we ever lumped them into the same pot with their Washington State brethren. After the mostly successful detours of Vitalogy and No Code, Pearl Jam decided to get back in the business of being a great live band, and their recent albums have all sounded like their first two, to a degree. The brand-new Riot Act, out this week, is no exception – like its two predecessors, Yield and Binaural, it’s just another Pearl Jam album.

Which means that it will probably be moderately successful, selling to a small yet dedicated band of faithful, and that’s about it. What some people call finding your sound, others call getting stuck in a rut, and Eddie Vedder’s boys have been digging their own rut since Yield. The focus these days is on a tight live sound, and hence the studio projects have a live feel – few additional instruments, sloppy production and no stylistic deviations. If you feel like you’ve heard Riot Act before, well, that’s because you have. Same stuff, different packages.

And really, that’s not a bad thing by itself. I just wish they weren’t quite so defiant about making music just for themselves. The songs on Riot Act have gotten more complex and, as is so often the case, less memorable at the same time. If you’re not paying attention, the whole thing will glide by you without anything sticking. Like Binaural, this album sounds like it was recorded in a weekend, with fab guitarists Gossard and Mike McCready smashing into each other and Vedder mumbling his way through the proceedings as if on four bottles of Ny-Quil. Never has such a memorable frontman gone to such lengths to be forgettable.

Given a few listens, the songs start to grow on you, and you can see the logic behind stompers like “Cropduster.” Riot Act is unsurprisingly devoid of the big choruses that marked the band’s early years, and it takes some time to seep in. Standouts include “Love Boat Captain,” with some of the sappiest lyrics to ever drip from Vedder’s pen, and the terrific “You Are,” with its menacing, propulsive beat. Also nifty are the double-time “Green Disease” and the elegant closer, “All or None.”

There are some missteps, as well, most notably the spoken extended mixed metaphor that is “Bushleaguer.” “Thumbing My Way” is merely nice, and not even close to the heights Pearl Jam are capable of in an acoustic setting. And “Arc,” likely named after their hero Neil Young’s document of noise, is just that – a document of noise. Its inclusion only adds credence to my “done in a weekend” theory.

Unfortunately, while this album ably shows off the powerhouse live act Pearl Jam has become, it does nothing to distinguish itself from its immediate predecessors. Many disliked No Code, but even they have to admit it bore scant resemblance to the albums that came before and after, and that means the band was taking chances, accepting risks and leading us on a trip to an unknown destination. Since then they’ve been treading the same old ground. Take this for what it’s worth, but Riot Act, for all its good qualities, is just another Pearl Jam album. No more, no less.

* * * * *

Sick as a really sick dog today, so that’s all from me. I was going to get to both Ours and Sigur Ros, but they’ll have to wait for my head to clear up. Audioslave hits next week as well, and I’ve been hearing good things. (One of those good things was not the single, the asinine “Cochise,” so we’ll see…)

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Just to prove how difficult and painful democracy can sometimes be, I fell down a flight of stairs on Tuesday.

These aren’t just any stairs, either. No, Captain Clutzo only selects the highest quality concrete upon which to injure himself. In my defense, it was raining rather heavily here, and my shoes were wet, and I was kind of in a hurry. As many folks in this fine country can tell you, gravity loves a fat man, and the slightest loss of footing is enough to spill the larger of us into her waiting embrace, which may be the wrong metaphor considering it left me with three large bruises and an irritating and painful stiffness.

But here’s the funny part. Tuesday was actually the second time I have fallen down that same staircase. I was on my way to vote, you see, and my polling center is the Augustana Lutheran Church here in Hobart. Like most churches, Augustana Lutheran celebrates its own magnificence by being huge and full of steep staircases one must ascend or descend to get anywhere within them. I had only been in the building once before – for May’s primary election, when I tumbled down the same set of stairs and came away with similar bruises.

And now the Republicans control Congress. Mock me if you will, but I think my personal pain is merely an omen to the country, a metaphorical sign of national bruises we shall soon bear. And, perhaps, it’s a sign that God just doesn’t want me in a church, or at least a Lutheran church. Both explanations make me feel quite a bit better than the obvious one I’m failing to mention: I am probably the biggest clumsy-ass spaz in the northern hemisphere.

* * * * *

If, like me, you need some perking up after the assorted ouchies of election day, I have just the thing – two examples of pure pop joy. I get taken to task fairly often for liking this sort of thing, mainly because I know a lot of music snobs who equate sweet and happy with commercial and useless. There are people I know that will not listen to an album more than once if it made them smile, as if wallowing in the muck of deep anguish and glowering angst were any more of a valid artistic expression. Jagged little pills are not inherently more artistic than mouth-melting mints. Pop is not a four-letter word, especially if it’s well made and doesn’t insult your intelligence.

Sixpence None the Richer have never insulted my intelligence. Well, there was that one “Kiss Me” song, but who remembers that?

Five years ago, Sixpence released their self-titled album, which many assumed was their first. Actually, it was their third full-length, not counting a nifty EP that directly preceded it, and it showcased a major growth in sound and style, featuring all manner of bizarre instruments, dramatic arrangements and even a song in 11/8 sung in Spanish. It contained exactly one simplistic throwaway, their first, which naturally became their breakout hit.

A bittersweet moment, to be sure, for while I was thrilled to see such a great band get national exposure, I was also sure that most everyone who bought the self-titled album would hate it. Sixpence needed a follow-up album quickly, one that capitalized on the pop style of “Kiss Me” without degenerating into crap. In short, they needed to craft the most intelligent yet accessible pop album on the stands, and they needed to do it in 1999.

Instead, they took four years off. That’s not exactly accurate, of course – the band finished draft one of their follow-up record in ’99, but their label (Steve Taylor’s tiny Squint Entertainment) ran out of money and couldn’t release it. To his credit, Taylor tried everything he could, but financial and legal entanglements kept the new Sixpence out of record stores until last week. Considering Squint was the second label to go belly-up on them, the band was probably not too happy, and when the title of the new album was announced as Divine Discontent, I was not surprised.

What did surprise me was hearing the whole thing at this year’s Cornerstone festival. Sixpence closed the week out with a midnight show made up almost entirely of new songs, and on first listen, they were sweet, light, gorgeous and perfect pop tunes. Despite its title, Divine Discontent is pretty much a bitterness-free zone. It’s also, upon reflection, the sublimely enjoyable, intelligent pop album I mentioned above, and if they had released it three years ago, they’d have been the biggest band on the planet.

Divine Discontent opens with two number one singles, in a perfect world. Actually, the world may well be heading towards perfection, as “Breathe Your Name,” the opening cut, is all over the airwaves. It’s easily one of the great pop songs of our time, effortlessly encapsulating the magic of a well-written melody in a terrific pop arrangement. “Tonight” is every bit as good, if a bit punchier, and should be every bit as popular.

Most of the attention showered on the band has been given to angelic-voiced frontwoman Leigh Nash, as can be seen on the back cover photo, which (unintentionally, I’m sure) resembles the argument-starting t-shirt design from Almost Famous. The secret weapon of this band is musical genius Matt Slocum – he’s the guy slouching off to the right in that photo – and his ear for arrangements that grab you every few seconds. Slocum’s guitar tone is full, rich and captivating, even on something simple like “I’ve Been Waiting,” and when he gets atmospheric on “A Million Parachutes,” it’s breathtaking. Slocum also plays cello and arranges the band’s string parts, most effectively on the lilting “Melody of You.”

Sixpence do make two boneheaded blunders here, which keep the record frustratingly shy of excellent. First, they do another ill-advised cover of a British pop song, in this case Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” but instead of appending it to the end of the album, they try to incorporate it at track four, and it just doesn’t fit. It doesn’t help that the song, the only one not produced by Slocum and Paul Fox, is gooped up in a sugary Corrs-like arrangement. No amount of cheese can keep “Don’t Dream It’s Over” from being one of the best pop tunes of all time, but this arrangement comes perilously close to ruining it.

The second mistake is less obvious, but more damaging, I think. At their Cornerstone show, Sixpence closed with an amazing, dramatic number called “Dizzy,” full of pianos and cascading guitars that crash into a quiet and beautiful conclusion. Any producer worth his salt would have told the band to end with that one – it’s the perfect album closer, and it’s even better on record than it was live. Unfortunately, they sequenced it third from the end, which has the unfortunate effect of making the final two songs sound like insignificant bonus tracks. When you hear it, you’ll understand – this is such an obvious blunder that I think I’d have noticed even if I hadn’t seen them close with “Dizzy” in concert.

While these errors certainly mar Divine Discontent, they don’t destroy it, and it certainly stands as one of my favorite records of the year so far. If the general public catches up with Sixpence again after five long years, embracing this near-perfect pop confection as it has the single, my long-since-lapsed faith in humanity may be restored. This is almost exactly the album they needed to make, and it’s one of the best examples of pop with a brain, sugar that’s good for you. It’s also surprisingly, overwhelmingly positive – far from discontented, and very nearly divine.

* * * * *

I feel lucky to have discovered this next band, one of the brightest lights of the next generation, in the same year that I also discovered Phantom Planet. Those lamenting the death of the song on radio can rejoice, ’cause as the Who said so many years ago, the kids are alright.

Last year, the Elms appeared with an album fittingly titled Big Surprise. Who could have guessed that four lads from Seymour, Indiana could beat the Brit-Poppers at their own game? Like an American Sloan, the Elms borrowed liberally from a number of sources, mostly ’60s and ’70s British rock, and crafted their own sound, part throwback and part glorious revolution. The songs were the thing, of course, and these songs, all from the brain of singer/guitarist Owen Thomas, were marvelous. When the album cover pictures revealed them to be mere kids, I was… well, surprised.

In less than a year’s time, the Elms have somehow gotten exponentially better. I smelled sophomore slump when they revealed the title of their second album: Truth, Soul, Rock & Roll. I mean, how pompous can one band get? Astoundingly, the album lives up to its title, providing a dozen glittering, perfect reminders of when songwriting skill was a valued commodity. Nearly every song is a classic, a singalong festival that burns itself into your brain.

Seriously, go buy this album (only ten bucks at Best Buy), stick it in and press play. If opener “Speaking in Tongues” doesn’t have you grinning like a three-year-old on a sugar binge and bouncing about the room, I’ll… well, I don’t know what I’ll do, but something embarrassing. If that song doesn’t work for you, try the melodic perfection of “Burn and Shine,” the lighter-worthy “Come to Me” or the chorus of “na-na-nas” that opens “Happiness.”

The Elms have somehow tapped into the primal power of pop, writing songs that fill some inner need that you didn’t even know you had until you hear them. These are songs you’ve heard a million times, and each time is like the first. They’re the future perennial hits of classic rock radio, the songs that grab the torch from every great pop song ever written. Truth, Soul, Rock & Roll breaks exactly no new ground, but it doesn’t have to. It revels in the soaring choruses of yesterday, and the eternal joy of melody and harmony meeting rhythm and taking her out for a dance. It’s one of the most enjoyable albums you’ll hear this year, and it’s hopefully just a taste of things to come from this dynamic young band.

* * * * *

It’s just coincidence that both bands this week have ties to the Christian music industry. Both tackle spirituality in such a way that if you’re not looking for it, you probably won’t find it. This tactic upsets some within the Christian industry, but it suits me just fine – I’m always looking for intelligent spirituality, but I have no qualms playing either of these bands for anyone, even the more militant atheists I know. Like a lot of U2 albums, the spiritual content is there if you want it, but invisible if you don’t.

Next week, some fringe-y stuff like Sigur Ros and Ours, or maybe that new Pearl Jam.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

Tori Amos yelled at me once.

I admit, it was partially my fault. I should have known better than to try to interview one of my favorite artists. I rarely get starstruck, but there are a few musicians, writers and directors that, I have discovered, can reduce me to a muddle-minded mess. Amos is one. I have been a bedazzled fan of her work since first hearing Little Earthquakes in 1992, still one of my top 10 favorite records of all time. Her passion and musicality still manages to trip the emotional switches that have long since dulled on the edges of decades of lousy pop cultural drivel.

So I should have realized that I’d have no intellectual questions to ask, no probing insights to glean. I really should have known that I’d just come off as another nervous fan, another drooling sensitive-male idiot. It’s kind of ironic, then, that Amos’ tirade was sparked by a question many, many journalists had apparently asked her: Why, Tori, did you not join up with the then-flowering Lilith Fair tour? He response was easy and obvious: I’m doing my own tour, she said, and I didn’t want to open up for Sarah McLachlan.

Fair enough. But then she decided to take out on me dozens of bad interviews in which that question had arisen. Two thoughts ran through my head during the ensuing six minutes. First, and most prominently, was this one: “This is probably my only conversation ever with Tori Amos, and she’s yelling at me.” That turned me several shades of pale, so much so that I barely recognized the second thought: “Man, she seems defensive.”

I admit that I had hoped for some behind-the-scenes disagreement between Amos and McLachlan, since both seem to come from different places where gender emphasis is concerned. McLachlan’s a pretty good singer that was elevated into some symbol of womanhood, all the while spouting lines like “Your love is better than ice cream.” She’s a pop songstress who used her brief stardom as a platform to open doors for other pop songstresses, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but Amos is, effortlessly, a living example of talent and passion making gender barriers irrelevant, and I thought she may have some insights on a tour that celebrated those barriers.

Her defensive reaction was interesting, in a shriveled pride sort of way, and I later thought that perhaps she considered herself better than anything the Lilith Fair was offering, and not in need of the tour’s help in any way. If so, she was right, even if she didn’t want to say so. This interview happened right after from the choirgirl hotel was released in 1998, an album that I hoped would be a minor hiccup in her career. Her three prior albums certainly put to shame the entire output of the Lilith participants, and she certainly couldn’t stick with choirgirl‘s simple, stupid songs and lifeless arrangements forever, could she?

I tell you this story partially as full disclosure. There is some tendency on the part of rabid fans of any artist to attribute a bad review to some personal vendetta on the part of the reviewer. Readers of the story I wrote for Face Magazine may remember that yes, Amos and I have talked, and no, it didn’t go especially well, and they may be tempted to put two and two together. Anyone who’s remained a faithful reader since then will tell you, however, that I’ve given the sad, slow decline of Tori Amos every chance to recapture past glories. I even graded last year’s cover album, Strange Little Girls, and 1999’s contract-swallowing To Venus and Back on a curve, forgiving ill-advised moments on both.

The free ride stops here, however.

I had hoped, what with the live album and the covers album back to back, that Amos was just unhappy with Atlantic Records, and once she fulfilled her contract and made the switch to Epic, she’d release the masterpiece she’d been secretly working on for three years. Alas, the just-released Scarlet’s Walk is terrible, easily the most boring and dead-sounding thing she’s ever signed her name to. (And I’m including Y Kant Tori Read, in case you were wondering.)

Amos’ first record for Epic is epic indeed: a so-called “sonic novel” that covers 18 tracks in 74 minutes. All of her albums are tied together conceptually, so it should be no surprise that Scarlet’s Walk is meant to tell a story – that of paper-thin Amos alter-ego Scarlet, and her walk across America. With this device, Amos hoped to put together a post-9/11 search for the heart of these United States, reflected in the wayward characters Scarlet meets. The limited edition packaging even comes with a map, some Polaroids and some stickers to mark your own journey, I guess.

Amos obviously put a lot of thought into the concept and the trappings, but it’s too bad she didn’t lavish some of that attention on the songs themselves. If, in fact, she rejected the Lilith Fair for offering little more than radio-ready fluff disguised as a battle cry, then it’s sadly ironic that “A Sorta Fairytale,” the lead single from Walk, sounds so much like third-rate Sarah McLachlan. It’s slick, simplistic and utterly boring. And it’s one of this album’s good songs.

Out of 18 songs, there are only three that I love, and a couple more that I like. Of those, none even comes close to “Silent All These Years,” for instance, or “Maryanne,” or even “Baker Baker.” Even her b-sides from that period (“Sugar,” “Flying Dutchman” and “Upside Down,” just to name three) wipe the floor with anything here. Imagine an entire album of “Past the Mission” arranged for elevators, and you have some idea of how snooze-worthy this thing is. It’s the first Tori album I nearly gave up on halfway through.

Trashing Tori makes me unbelievably depressed, so I’ll try to focus on the positive. “Carbon” is wonderful, a swirling vortex of notes and melody that slips into odd times at odd moments. The hook line (“Keep your eyes on her horizon”) is the best thing about all of Walk‘s 74 minutes. The seven-minute “I Can’t See New York” is heartbreaking, and dynamically arranged. The chorus parts find Amos desperately pleading over solo piano, a sound I’d almost forgotten could thrill me this much. And closer “Gold Dust” is lovely, a throwback to the “classic” Amos sound of piano, voice and strings.

In the second tier are “Fairytale,” which admittedly grows more pleasant with each listen; “Taxi Ride,” the likely next single; and “Sweet Sangria,” which starts out like most of the others with a limp bass-and-drums groove but launches into surprisingly melodic terrain. It shouldn’t be surprising, though – Amos is better than the other dozen songs here, most of which string the same chords together in the same ways. I barely stayed awake through “Don’t Make Me Come to Vegas,” and can’t quite distinguish it from “Strange,” “Crazy,” “Pancake,” or numerous others.

All the elements are there for a slam dunk, and that’s what makes Scarlet’s Walk so frustrating. Amos is back on piano for almost every track, which I’ve been clamoring for since choirgirl. She’s got a concept rich with possibilities, and complete creative freedom. And I hate that she’s used that freedom to sand all the rough edges off and turn in something barely competent, simple and slick. Sure, she’s playing piano again, but we never get to hear just how good she is. She seems to have forgotten how to write a song like “Yes, Anastasia,” with sections and changes and drama.

Her concept also lends itself to the multicolored emotions that used to be her trademark. America in the past year has been a harrowing experience, a healing process that deserves emotional exploration. Alas, since her first three albums, Amos has rejected the immediate, honest approach that made the listener feel like an integral part of her process. The seething pain of Little Earthquakes, the budding joy of Under the Pink, the unrestrained fury of Boys for Pele – absent any of these, Scarlet’s Walk is distant and disposable.

The saddest thing about Scarlet’s Walk is how forgettable it is. Like her character, she seems to meander about this album with no clear sense of direction, and no melodic or lyrical focus. Rather than searching aimlessly for the heart of America, Amos sounds like she needs to look inward for the heart of her own talent. She may be playing displaced characters here, but Amos herself sounds depressingly scattered and lost.

* * * * *

I can’t let this column go by without mentioning Jam Master Jay.

The Run-DMC DJ was gunned down early Halloween morning, the latest victim of an increasingly violent rap culture. The ironies abound here – Run-DMC was instrumental in bringing hip-hop to the masses, allowing it to become the all-pervasive juggernaut it now is. The seminal trio believed in the joyous expression rap could be, the positive influence it could bring to young black people. In recent years, the members of Run-DMC expressed regret at the twisted and violent thing their child has become. In a sense, the murder of Jay feels like rap’s final, absolute rejection of its parents’ values, and that’s a sad thing.

Next week, any one of a number of intriguing possibilities.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

So I thought I’d say goodbye to the Black Crowes this week.

I get derisive snorts and chuckles whenever I say this, but there’s no doubt in my mind that for the past decade, there hasn’t been a better rock ‘n’ roll band in the world than the Crowes. Most every other band that claimed rock roots tempered those with some “new” sound, some culturally relevant depression or some studio trip-hoppery to keep the kids happy. While an argument can certainly be made for music’s need to progress, there was always something refreshing about the fact that none of the Crowes seem aware that the ’80s and ’90s have happened.

The band, led by brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, made six loud, sloppy albums of varying quality, but not one of them could be considered anything but rock ‘n’ roll. Occasionally they gave in to their psychedelic tendencies, most notably on Three Snakes and One Charm, but there was always enough gut-powered rock to successfully defend the title the Rolling Stones have been abusing for 30-some years: Best Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in the World. Bar fucking none.

I’m not up on the circumstances surrounding the band’s split, mostly because that sort of thing depresses me greatly. Whenever personal differences supersede artistic brotherhood, literally in this case, it reminds me that all art, no matter how divine in origin, has to be filtered through flimsy, fallible, petty, pathetic flesh and blood before it can be realized. The best artists make me forget that the dilution process is occurring at all.

But from what I can gather, it was an inevitably bad one. The brothers Robinson have never really gotten along, even though any idiot could hear that their chemistry and fire fueled the spitting attitude of their music. Nevertheless, critical mass was reached sometime shortly after the release of their swan song, the muddy, imperfectly perfect Lions. And while a reconciliation – or even a sellout reunion tour sponsored by a beer company – is never out of the question, the coffin has been nailed shut for now with the release of Chris Robinson’s solo debut, New Earth Mud.

I know that the Crowes followed the ’70s rock handbook pretty closely, and I never had a problem with that. I just wish that Robinson hadn’t adhered to the cliche quite so completely by first marrying a beautiful actress (Kate Hudson) and then releasing a goopy, sappy soft-rock solo album all about her. New Earth Mud is almost entirely acoustic, and dripping with true love and commitment and puppies and flowers and all the stuff you would expect never to find on a Crowes album.

Okay, it’s not that bad, but the complete lack of anything resembling, you know, rock ‘n’ roll is somewhat depressing. The singing Robinson was obviously the driving force behind the band’s quieter moments, but his brother usually added a necessary edge that’s completely missing here. Any album that opens with a song called “Safe in the Arms of Love” should send a red flag, for starters, and that song is one of two that raises the tempo past first gear.

None of which is inherently bad, of course. Robinson still has that distinctive, growl-and-whine voice, proof that he’s a born rock star. He sings his little ass off here, no doubt, and even his voice is so 1970s that if you didn’t know better, you’d swear New Earth Mud was vintage. Everything that made ’70s soft southern rock what it was is here, for better or worse. Songs like “Barefoot By the Cherry Tree” and “Could You Really Love Me?” are exactly as you imagine they are. And yes, there is a song called “Katie Dear,” and it’s at least as sappy as you expect. (He rhymes “Katie dear” with “don’t fear,” to give you some indication.)

In fact, you have to wait for track 10, “Ride,” to hear something that couldn’t be described as drowsy. The song is a funkified romp that, unfortunately, sets most of the rest of the album into sharp relief. Robinson has surprisingly squirreled his strongest material away at the end of the album. Closing tracks “Better Than the Sun” and “She’s On Her Way,” while still slower than molasses running uphill, are engaging songs, unlike much of New Earth Mud. It’s not all bad, but when the album is over, you’ll likely think to yourself that it was pretty and nice, and I never thought I’d be able to describe a Robinson project in those terms.

The contrast wouldn’t be so great if the other Robinson hadn’t recently produced a massive, sloppy slab of live Crowes with which you can contrast Chris’ effort. Typically titled The Black Crowes Live, this two-disc affair (recorded on their final tour and released in August) confirms that even right up until the end, these guys were the real deal. Just listen to the Robinsons play off of each other on “Sometimes Salvation,” Chris rubbing his vocal chords raw just to outdo the punch of Rich’s guitar. The whole band cranks here, and it’s interesting to hear the older material played with the same fuzzy, buzzing noise that covers the Lions tracks.

The strongest moments, of course, come when the band locks onto a powerhouse rock ‘n’ roll groove, and the best of those appear at the beginning and end of the album. They open with “Midnight From the Inside Out,” move through “Sting Me” and on to rarity “Thick ‘n’ Thin.” That’s a one-two-three punch that’s only surpassed by the album’s closing stretch of rockin’ goodness. Just try to find any modern band that can slam through a set-closing selection like “Twice As Hard,” “Lickin’,” “Soul Singing,” “Hard to Handle” and “Remedy” with this much stunning power.

It may be true that you can’t kill rock ‘n’ roll, but the loss of the Black Crowes is like giving it a sucking chest wound. For 10 years, they captured the spirit of rock better than any other band on the planet. It’s a shame to see such a thing come to an end, and doubly shameful to hear where Chris Robinson has decided to go, but at least we can pull out our old Crowes CDs and pretend we know how our parents feel when they dig out their old LPs.

One last toast, then, to the Best Rock ‘n’ Roll Band in the World.

* * * * *

Next week, Tori. In keeping with tradition, the single is a boring piece of radio-ready fluff. Hopefully, tradition holds and the album is much better than the song. We shall see. Still working on those promised submissions, but it’s starting to look like I may not get to them before the end of the year.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

If I weren’t already considering completely revising my rules for the Year-End Top 10 List, this week’s first entry would have started me thinking about it.

Some people have suggested that instead of having an increasingly complicated series of regulations and criteria, I should just make a list of my favorite CDs in a given year, be they studio, live, best-of, singles, whatever. I’m still rejecting the idea, because I think some structure is a good thing, and I also don’t want to start viewing my list the same way I view the Grammys. Still, if I were to adopt such a freeform policy, I could include Ben Folds Live, without a doubt the CD I’ve flat-out enjoyed the most in 2002 thus far.

Alas, as you can tell by the title, it’s a live album, and hence ineligible under the current rules. Ben Folds Live (a witty play on his old band’s name) documents his recent Ben Folds and a Piano tour across the U.S., which featured (that’s right) just Ben Folds and his Baldwin, not so much playing songs from his four-album catalog as reinventing them.

And here’s why I’m struggling with the fact that as it stands, I’ll have to exclude this puppy in December. Throughout Ben Folds Live, Folds displays ample creativity and ingenuity, coming up with astonishingly inventive ways to compensate for the lack of bass and drums. For much of the material from the Five’s albums, Folds plays all three parts, jamming Robert Sledge’s bass lines with his left hand while keeping Darren Jessee’s drum beats with both feet and a microphone. The solo piano arrangements of these songs took more skill than many artists bring to their original studio material.

What’s more, this album may be the best single piece of evidence in existence that Ben Folds is an absolute genius songwriter and player. We’ll take the former first: Ben Folds Live samples liberally from all three of the Five’s albums (Ben Folds Five, Whatever and Ever Amen and The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner) and his solo debut from last year, Rockin’ the Suburbs. When stacked all in a row like this, they’re a catalog of some of the best pop songs of the last 10 years. They even stand up nicely to a classic like Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer,” which Folds faithfully covers.

Folds has long been a sterling example of pop done right, and his work stands in stark contrast to the melodically deficient crap that’s been clogging the airwaves for decades. The creeping dominion of hip hop and rap has convinced a dishearteningly vast majority of today’s musicians that you don’t need to actually know how to write a song to make a record. The true test, in my humble opinion, of any pop song’s melodic worth is if it can stand up to a complete undressing – does it work on just one instrument, like an acoustic guitar? Or, say, a piano?

And yeah, mammoth constructions like “Narcolepsy” and “The Last Polka” are loaded with studio trickery in their respective album versions, but they hold up here remarkably well. Opener “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces” remains the joyride it’s always been, and even a relative trifle like “Jane” sounds like a classic here. He enlists the audience to provide a buoyant impression of the horn section in “Army,” complete with both saxophone and trumpet parts. Folds even debuts some tunes here, most notably the lovely “Silver Street” and hilarious b-side “One Down,” which will stick in your head forever.

Songs aside, Ben Folds Live is worth picking up just to hear the man play. Folds has a style that combines the vigorous energy of Jerry Lee Lewis with the technique of Brad Mehldau and the soul of Billy Joel, and the resulting mix is beautiful when needed, and louder than hell when necessary. Tracks like “Zak and Sara” and “The Last Polka” are flawless melodic workouts, and through it all Folds’ voice is in fine form as well.

The jaw-dropper here comes near the end, when Folds tackles his early classic “Philosophy.” The song is a propulsive masterpiece, and this arrangement suffers not at all for lack of accompaniment. Midway through, it sounds like Folds pulls out a third arm to accomplish some of his dazzling solo lines, and he even breaks it down to include a lightning-fast rendition of Dick Dale’s “Misirlou.” If not for the filmed performance of this arrangement on the accompanying DVD, I’d think it was impossible for one man to play it.

I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you. Pieces of this album were recorded at the Vic Theatre in Chicago, back in March (including extemporaneous highlight “Rock This Bitch,” about which I will say nothing) – a show I nearly attended. I bailed because of work, but listening to this disc and watching the performances on the DVD, I’ve decided there’s no way I’m going to miss his repeat performance next month. Seriously, if you’ve ever liked pop music of any stripe, then you will like this. Ben Folds represents the undying beauty of the well-written, well-played pop song better than anyone of his generation, and Ben Folds Live is more fun than you can have for $15 anywhere else.

* * * * *

Enough about shows I didn’t see.

Last month I caught the Lost Dogs in a little church in Long Grove, IL, on their “True Alternative” tour, and it was a delight. The tour is structured like four shows in one – each of the three Dogs plays a set, and then all three hit the stage for a full Lost Dogs show. All told, it clocked in at more than three hours of acoustic merriment.

The Dogs, as I’ve mentioned before, are Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos, Derri Daugherty of the Choir and Michael Roe of the 77s. Each of these guys is worth seeing on their own, as they’re all good songwriters and singers, and each has a back catalog of dozens of great tunes from their respective bands. Together, though, they play off of each other hilariously – Terry the cranky genius, Mike the disgruntled rock star and Derri the shy wallflower, sending good-natured barbs back and forth like water balloons. And their singing voices blend beautifully as well.

The Lost Dogs have long been on a quest to capture the spiritual roots of American music, blending country, folk and gospel in an earthy stew. That quest was only enhanced by their dear, departed member, the late, great Gene Eugene, who had a voice that could make angels weep. Gene, of unearthly awesome band Adam Again, made four superb albums with the Dogs, and arguably the finest of those is The Green Room Serenade, Part One, a 70-minute tour de force anchored by Eugene’s best contributions.

The band never got around to making Part Two, but the latest tour is accompanied by a new live CD called The Green Room Serenade, Part Tour, which documents a full band show from 1996. And if nothing else, the album is worth getting just for one more visit with the amazing Gene Eugene. His rendition of “The Last Temptation of Angus Shane” will bring tears, and if that doesn’t, then hearing him sing “Jimmy” undoubtedly will. Time all but stops for those two minutes.

The other three Dogs shine here as well. Part Tour really emphasizes the band’s diversity, sliding effortlessly from the gospel-folk of “Breathe Deep” to the rollicking bluegrass of “Bad Indigestion” to the perfect pop of “No Ship Coming In.” Three covers finish the album off: Eugene takes lead on Leonard Cohen’s “If It Be Your Will,” and the three remaining Dogs harmonize wonderfully on new studio versions of the Beach Boys’ “With Me Tonight” and Bob Dylan’s “Lord, Protect My Child.”

For a side project that was only meant as a lark, the Lost Dogs have amassed quite the catalog of great songs. As a sampler of that catalog, Part Tour is a great place to start if you’ve never heard of them. The trio has just completed a new album, which the record label is really hoping they don’t call Nazarene Crying Towel, and the songs they played from it at the Long Grove show were swell, if more gospel-oriented than they’ve been in the past.

Once you get into the Dogs, you’re going to want to check out everything from the members’ “real” bands as well. I especially recommend the Choir, one of the best bands to ever walk the earth. And I guarantee you, when Part Tour was recorded in 1996, Choir singer Derri Daugherty was already hard at work on his solo album, which he still hasn’t finished.

He has, however, released a five-song sampler of that upcoming release, descriptively titled A Few Unfinished Songs. It’s a testament to how much I love Derri that I paid $12 for these 14 minutes of music, and I feel like I got a deal. Daugherty sings like no one else, and he plays guitar like he’s sculpting magic in the air. These songs are all short and sweet, and especially wonderful are opener “All the World to Me” and “Logical Conclusion,” one of the best pop songs of the year. Don’t give up, Derri – a few more songs like these and you’ve got one marvelous album on your hands.

The Green Room Serenade, Part Tour and A Few Unfinished Songs are exclusive releases from Lo-Fidelity Records, which I think is basically just Jeffrey K. and his wife in their apartment. If you support him, he’ll be able to finance more releases like this, so go to www.lo-fidelity.com and buy, buy, buy. And then go to www.danielamos.com, www.thechoir.net, www.77s.com and www.thelostdogs.com and buy, buy, buy some more. It’s all good.

* * * * *

Next time, some submissions from folks I’ve never met.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’ve been feeling a bit low lately.

My apologies to all those folks whose calls and e-mails I haven’t responded to – I appreciate the good wishes, and I will get back to all of you, I swear. It’s just that I’ve been in a funk since the new editorial mandate, and coupled with the fact that writing shorter pieces about stupid things paradoxically takes longer for me than writing miniature novels on important issues, I haven’t been in much of a companionship mood. A public apology, then, to the people in my life who have proven again and again that they will do anything to stay there. Your patience and friendship is appreciated.

So, guess what I did?

Give up?

I did what all Americans do when they get down in the dumps – I spent a shit-ton of money. Long story short, my piece of shit Saturn had begun making this hellish whining noise whenever I pushed it above 50 miles per hour. I marshaled every ounce of mechanical aptitude that I possess and proclaimed the noise “not good.” Hence, I drove onto the Ford lot near my house, and in about an hour, I became the proud owner of a 2002 Focus, which many, many people have told me since was one of the worst choices I could have made.

But hell, it runs, it runs well, and I got one of those 72,000-mile warranties, so I think it’s all good. Plus, it’s blue and shiny and roomy and it still has that great new car smell. And I’ll be paying for it until I’m 33. But whatever. For at least a little while, I can pull myself out of my depression by saying, either to myself or out loud, “I bought a new car.” That’s worth it.

Okay, this column is starting to read like one of those annoying blog things that have infected the ‘net as of late, and I have a whole stack of CDs ready for review. Music! Music! Go Go Go!

* * * * *

Here’s what I don’t understand about Beck.

Or rather, I guess, what I don’t understand about the critical reaction to Beck’s career. There’s no doubting that Mr. Hansen is one of our finest musical ironists, able to poke fun at any style by imitating it down to the smallest identifying details. His usual modus operandi, if he can be said to have one, is to maintain a safe ironic distance from whatever style he’s lambasting, while simultaneously immersing himself in the sonic collage he’s crafting. The result is kind of a post-modern nostalgia trip, particularly for fans of funk, soul and old-school hip hop.

But see, here’s what I don’t understand. When Beck puts out a funk-pop album like Odelay or a soul record like Midnite Vultures, critics praise him for his satirical abilities. Hell, even Prince probably laughed at how well Beck aped his sex-charged falsetto on Vultures‘ “Debra,” one of his best tunes. But when Beck turns around and releases something like Mutations, or like his latest, Sea Change, those same critics pile on the platitudes for breaking down that satirical wall and releasing music charged with honesty and sincerity.

If anything, Sea Change is an even more deadpan imitation of Nick Drake than Vultures was of Prince. It’s dark, woozy, depressing music full of atmospheric beauty, sure, but there’s no more evidence of sincerity here than there was on Mellow Gold. In many ways, it’s his finest work of satire yet, devoid of the winking self-consciousness that marked Mutations, and the best evidence of its effectiveness would be the legions of “musicologists” lauding it for its openness.

Sea Change is a stunning update of Drake’s Five Leaves Left sound. You get the acoustic guitar driving all of the songs at a loping pace, the marvelously arranged strings that dance around the melody, the harpsichords and electric pianos that add flavor here and there, and you get Beck himself, singing like he’s already slashed one wrist and is headed for the other. The songs have titles like “Already Dead,” “Lonesome Tears” and “Lost Cause,” and lyrical lines like “Your sorry eyes cut to the bone” and “It feels like I’m watching something die.”

And like all faithful recreations, you’ll respond well to Sea Change if you’re already enamored with the style he’s chosen. I sure am, and whether he intended sincerity or not, Beck has made the best and most beautiful album of his career here, and one of the best of the year. Rib-tickling homage or not, Odelay was a kick-ass funk record, and by the same token, Sea Change is an uncannily gorgeous song cycle. It’s all about the music anyway, and this music is terrific.

A huge portion of the credit undoubtedly must go to Nigel Godrich, who is quickly establishing himself as one of the finest producers on the planet. Godrich produced, among other things, Radiohead’s OK Computer, and Beck’s Mutations. He’s a master of atmosphere, and his deft touch lends an otherworldly quality to these recordings. Without Godrich, the Nick Drake reference wouldn’t be quite so accurate – Sea Change is such an effective portrait of going under that it sounds like it was recorded in the split-second before all the musicians peacefully drowned.

Every song on this album is a wonder, both sonically and musically. The hazy “Round the Bend” is the closest Beck gets to a drone, but every song has at least one killer melody, and the album never blends together into a dismal mess. That would have been so easy with material like this, but Beck and Godrich spread magic over every minute of this album. “Paper Tiger,” for example, is buoyed by insistent, stabbing strings that leave you breathless, and “Sunday Sun” rises on a wave of pianos and guitars that finally crashes at the end, reminiscent of much of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

The truly ironic thing would be if Beck’s younger fans, raised on a steady diet of funk-inflected hip-hop, bought Sea Change and hailed it as a new style. Beck is still an imitator, not an innovator, but in this case he’s chosen magnificent source material. In a lot of ways, Beck’s entire career thus far has been an imitation of David Bowie’s, complete with hops from style to style. There’s no evidence that Bowie has deeply felt one word or note of his long career, either, but that doesn’t make his music any less relevant or spectacular. Similarly, whether Beck means it or not, Sea Change is a masterpiece.

* * * * *

The same might be said of Ryan Adams, who wears his tortured-poet pose like a rumpled shirt. Even his haircut simultaneously cries out for love while warning of abusive tendencies. Whether or not that’s really Adams is irrelevant: the man writes beautiful songs, and if acting like a lovestruck Romeo with a cocaine problem helps him to do that, then pose away, young Adams.

I’m being harsh, I know, but it seems like everything I read about Adams focuses on his image and his loud mouth rather than his undeniable talent. Last year Adams made a record called Gold that covered 76 minutes (plus a bonus disc, cheekily called Side Four) with not one lousy song. Some of them, in fact, were absolutely lovely (“When the Stars Go Blue” and “Wild Flowers,” to name but two), and had I been thinking straight, I’d have included Gold on the Top 10 List for 2001.

While making Gold, so the legend goes, the former Whiskeytowner also slapped together four other full-length albums, some with a band and some without. Since then, Adams has downgraded those recordings to “demo collections,” and has whittled them down to one 13-track compilation, called Demolition. (Never fear, completists: Adams says that if this disc sells well, he’ll put all four albums out in a boxed set by Christmas.)

In order to talk about Demolition, I think we need to clarify the definition of “demo” just a bit. While it’s true that every version of a song prior to the final studio recording technically qualifies as a demo, I remember when demos were sloppy, indistinct things recorded in a garage or a living room. They were first stabs at songs, and gave tremendous insight into the shaping of the final version. These days, any hack with a few bucks can afford either studio time or home recording equipment that delivers digital clarity, and if you’re a rock star like Adams, you can get producers like Ethan Johns to make your demos.

Basically, there’s no reason to call these recordings demos. They’re not even appreciably rawer than much of Gold, so don’t be scared. Demolition is just another Ryan Adams album, and while his batting average isn’t quite what it was on Gold, most of these songs are excellent. Highlights include the fragile “Cry On Demand,” the raucous “Starting to Hurt” and the lovely “Tomorrow,” featuring glorious harmonies by Gillian Welch, but if you like any of Adams’ previous material, you’ll like this.

There are some low lights, however. Most glaringly, if I were U2’s lawyer, I would seriously consider some kind of legal action over “Desire.” Opener “Nuclear” seems to exist simply to prove that Adams knows the correct pronunciation of the word (“new-clear,” not “new-cue-lar”), since it doesn’t sound like he put too much thought into it. And “Tennessee Sucks” is a great name for a song, and should have been more caustic – there are plenty of good reasons to write such a song, trust me. This one, however, is a Van Morrison-esque portrait of lazy summer days, and could take place anywhere.

But the majority of Demolition upholds Adams’ reputation as a purveyor of fresh-sounding traditionalism, a country-tinged folk-rocker that won’t make you wince at that description. He exists in a strange middle ground between Dylan, Springsteen and Steve Earle, and so far, he’s walked that tightrope well. But beyond all the pithy analyses, and even beyond his sensitive-danger-boy image, Adams is just a guy who writes good songs and sings them well. There are a whole bunch of those good songs on Demolition, all sung well, and anything else you need to enjoy it is your problem.

Oh, and just for the record, Tennessee does, indeed, suck.

* * * * *

One of my two favorite guitarists, Michael Roe, put out three albums this year so far, not counting the new Lost Dogs live album, so I wasn’t even waiting for something from my other fave, Mark Knopfler. But here it is – the former Dire Straits leader’s third solo album, called The Ragpicker’s Dream. And if you’re put off by that title, you shouldn’t buy it.

While both Beck and Ryan Adams specialize in updates of more traditional sounds, Knopfler wanted the real deal, and so Ragpicker’s is mostly a down-home country-fied folk shuffle. It’s also almost entirely acoustic, which is fine, but Knopfler has an electric guitar tone that can’t be beat, and it’s kind of a shame that it appears so infrequently here.

Quibble, quibble. Never mind what isn’t here, what’s here is a fun diversion, if nothing special. For Knopfler fans, here’s the best way to describe it: about 10 years ago, Knopfler formed a side band called the Notting Hillbillies. They put out one record, the joyous, back-woods Missing, Presumed Having a Good Time. This album sounds like that one.

You’ll know Knopfler isn’t taking himself too seriously by the first track, a pseudo-Irish lilt called “Why Aye Man” that also contains the best electric guitar lick on the record. Most of the rest consists of late-’50s and early-’60s inspired acoustic romps, with the occasional stomp thrown in (“Coyote,” “You Don’t Know You’re Born”). It’s fun, but it’s not nearly as engrossing or impressive as Sailing to Philadelphia, or any of Knopfler’s work with Dire Straits.

Still, though, it has more than its share of delights, especially early highlight “Hill Farmer’s Blues,” which drifts into the stratosphere on lovely sustained guitar lines. “Devil Baby” is a beautiful song marred by cheesy hee-haw lyrics, which actually could describe roughly half of these tunes. “A Place Where We Used to Live” is a low, rumbling soft jazz number suffused with nearly imperceptible menace. The aforementioned “Coyote” is, by Knopfler standards, a bone-crusher.

And if you stop the disc before you hit the title track, at number 10, you’ll spare yourself the album’s quick decline into silly, trite guff. “Old Pigweed” isn’t even worth discussing, so obliterated is it by the lyrics. So we won’t. I’ll simply leave it by saying that on the final tracks, Knopfler crosses the line from fun novelty, like “Quality Shoe,” into ridiculous embarrassment.

If Mark Knopfler made albums more quickly, I wouldn’t mind an occasional backyard hootenanny like The Ragpicker’s Dream, but he doesn’t. It took two years to bring us this one, even though more than half of it sounds like it was recorded in an afternoon. It gets by on his distinctive voice and guitar style, which few can even imitate, let alone duplicate. It’s entirely possible that this album will grow on me before year’s end, but right now I’m on my fifth trip through, and it still hasn’t grabbed me. It’s too bad, because when Knopfler’s on, he’s a treasure.

* * * * *

I was going to review Ben Folds today too, but I think that’s enough words for one week, don’t you? Coming up, craploads more music, and the deluge doesn’t stop anytime soon, either. I think I’m going to take a nap now.

But first, I might drive around the block a few times in my brand-freakin’-new car.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I’m a little bit distracted this week.

As anyone who works at a newspaper, magazine or any other publication can tell you, there’s a near-constant war between the editorial and advertising departments. The ad department is all about the money – as they should be, really, but what often irks the editorial department is that they can’t understand why we would, for example, talk badly about a potential advertiser, even if they’re breaking the law and we have the scoop. Ad people don’t read the editorial pages, and vice versa, of course, but it’s a bone of contention among editorial people, because how can you sell the paper on its merits if you don’t know what those merits are?

The sad reality that few editorial people realize is the shit they write means nothing at all. It’s the circulation numbers that sell the paper, and as long as we don’t praise Osama Bin Ladin on page one, it doesn’t matter what we fill the space around the ads with. The flip side, unfortunately, is that editorial content is the first thing blamed when the ad sales slip. Since the two departments have little to nothing to do with each other, blaming one for the other’s lack of success seems out of touch with reality. But it happens all the time.

At my newspaper of employment, word has come down from the top that editorial must change to bring in more advertising. Our owner, who’s like four hundred years old, is trying to force a symbiotic relationship upon the two departments. The thinking goes like this: If potential advertisers see their kids’ pictures in the paper, or they see that we lavished whole columns on their church social or picnic or whatever, then they’re more likely to buy ad space in the paper.

Henceforth, we editorial types are now going to be running around town covering every dumb shit event, no matter how insignificant. We are to ignore larger issues, to the point of not covering county and state government. Our focus is to be what editors the country over derisively refer to as “chicken dinner content.” It’s lots of pictures, fewer words, and whole herds of smiling kids.

My contention is that you don’t need journalists for that kind of work. Anyone can write advertorial pieces, and anyone can cover the latest Lions Club cookout in 15 inches. I’ve always felt that the skills I’ve been honing should be used in service of larger issues, like governmental mismanagement and corporate crime. This may sound helplessly naive, but I still feel that the press should be using its power for good, and that includes exerting the power of the common man on those in control, to make sure they do what’s right.

And honestly, I’m not running for office here. I just don’t know what greater good I can do covering vacation bible schools, or community craft fairs. The shame of it is, I was starting to get a nice foothold in the crazy little town I cover, and I had people calling me with tips and information because they know I’ll dig around and find the answers. What am I supposed to say now? “Sorry, but my boss says I can’t write about this unless there are cute kids involved?”

Our paper is a weekly, which means we can’t compete with the daily papers when it comes to breaking stories. All we have to offer is depth, which we had been doing really well. The average story in a daily paper is around 15 to 20 inches. Our average is 30 to 35, and I’ve even gone to 50. In order to provide the depth necessary to outdo the daily papers on the same stories, we need that extra space. But now we’ve been told that our stories must also be no longer than 20 inches.

But that’s not all. We’re not even trying to compete in that arena anymore. Our publisher actually seems excited about this idea – we’re going to be the paper that covers all the crappy things the daily papers don’t want to. Never mind that the dailies don’t want to waste the space on these stories because they’re just not that important, and they make for boring reading. Our publisher actually used the phrase “podunk local newspaper” without a trace of irony, as if it were a good thing, a noble aspiration.

Now, I ask you, who with any ounce of journalistic training and experience is going to want to commit 60 hours a week busting his or her ass for a “podunk local newspaper,” especially one that doesn’t even try to rise above that distinction?

Well, not our associate editor, that’s for sure.

I’ve mentioned this guy before. He’s 20 pounds of asshole in a 10 pound bag, most times, but I’ve actually learned quite a bit from him in the past few months about the law, and about tracking down a story. When this guy, who’s a grizzled, hardened journalist of old, heard about these changes, he quickly resigned in protest. His last day is next Friday.

As many times as I’ve wished this guy would be fired, I’d never imagined that he’d willingly leave honorably, and that I’d respect him for it.

And now I’m wondering who’s going to be next, and if it’s going to be me.

Back to the music next week, I swear, with Beck, Ryan Adams, Mark Knopfler and Ben Folds. Seriously. I wouldn’t lie to you.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I got a bunch of e-mails last time, hailing me for trashing Peter Gabriel, and I had to laugh. I felt like reminding people that I haven’t officially trashed the man yet. That’s this week.

Up is Gabriel’s first “real” new album in 10 years. To put that into perspective, Gabriel was the lead singer of Genesis for only seven years, and some folks still consider that an era. During that time, he made six studio albums with the band, one of them, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, a double record that’s still hailed as a progressive rock classic today. He started his solo career in 1977, and within 10 years he had crafted five studio albums, a live record and an ambient soundtrack to Alan Parker’s Birdy.

The last of those albums you may be familiar with. So gave Gabriel his biggest chart success to date, and sported three huge, giant, almost unbelievably popular hits: “Sledgehammer,” “Big Time” and the classic “In Your Eyes.” Problem is, if you stack So next to any one of his four self-titled albums, it falls painfully short. In general, with massive popularity comes reduced creative drive, and Gabriel certainly seemed to succumb to that.

It took Gabriel six years to create So‘s follow-up, the halfway successful Us. It then took another 10 to bring us Up. In between, granted, he’s released three side projects that rank with the best work he’s ever done, including the amazing Passion, his soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Still, five releases in 16 years is pretty slim, especially considering the rapid-fire output of his first 17.

All by itself, that wouldn’t be much of an issue, but when you take a long, hard look at the relative quality of those last three “real” albums, it’s pretty disappointing. Gabriel is one of the few working musicians for whom the tag “genius” isn’t an exaggeration. His solo career has found him embracing musics from around the globe, and incorporating them much more successfully than his contemporaries, like Paul Simon. Passion, all by itself, is a world-spanning kick in the head to cultural and artistic segregation, a whirlwind of African percussion and techno-tribal hybrids that comes off as a new creation rather than a fusion.

And three years later, his weakest work to date, Us, splattered those influences over simplistic pop and pseudo-soul like a Jackson Pollock painting. Some of it worked – the lovely “Blood of Eden,” for example, and the mood-altering “Fourteen Black Paintings.” Most of it, however, tried to squeeze too much sound onto thin skeletons. “Come Talk to Me” is a mess, and “Kiss That Frog” is an embarrassment, a cancerous boil on his discography that should have been lanced.

And now, Up. I’m going to admit something here that you’ll hardly ever hear me say: I’m torn on this album. It’s certainly his most artistically rewarding “real” album in 20 years, which actually says more about his recent output than this disc. It’s a slowly unfolding collection of moods and melodies, at least in its first half, and is certainly a risky release, especially after a 10-year gestation period. If you’re looking for the crowd-pleasing pop of his last two albums, it’s almost entirely absent, which is a good thing.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot left that sticks in the memory. Sonically, this is an amazing disc – you probably won’t hear a more perfectly produced and mixed album this year. (The mixing process by itself took a whole year.) Opener “Darkness” starts off with a holy-shit moment that recalls Prodigy and their ilk, but slowly degenerates into tuneless piano moping, setting the dismally slow pace for the rest of the album. Only three tracks have what could be described as a beat, and by the fifth seven-minute dirge, it becomes clear that the album’s title is ironic. There’s very little up about Up.

Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but Gabriel forgot to write any truly compelling songs here. Like so many albums these days, it feels like Gabriel concentrated most of his efforts on the sound and didn’t save much for the substance of his work. Only one song here is less than six minutes long, and most of them can’t sustain their length. Only “I Grieve,” which was previously released on the City of Angels soundtrack in 1997, takes you somewhere from minute two to minute six, and even that one doesn’t rank with his best.

“Growing Up,” for example, introduces a throbbing techno beat to longtime drummer Manu Katche’s meticulous percussion, but then repeats ad nauseum. It’s catchy, but not very inventive. Likewise, “No Way Out” gets by on one superb melodic shift that plays a few times, but otherwise meanders pleasantly with no destination in mind. Even “Sky Blue,” a standout highlight that builds upon a track from Gabriel’s Long Walk Home soundtrack from earlier this year, repeats its celestial melody a few times too often.

I’m not sure what fans of “Sledgehammer” are going to make of tracks like “My Head Sounds Like That,” with its brass choir and pained falsetto vocals, and “Signal to Noise,” which sets a sweeping string section to a thudding funeral beat, a warbling Nusrat Fateh Ali-Khan, and almost no melody at all. These are perhaps the most disappointing numbers, ones on which you can feel Gabriel stretching out, aiming for new sounds and stopping short of actually nailing them. “Signal to Noise,” especially, is confounding – I’m not entirely certain what Gabriel was going for, but it’s pretty obvious by the finished product that he didn’t quite make it.

And then there’s “The Barry Williams Show,” the first single. It’s rumored that Gabriel wrote 150 songs for this project, and I have a hard time believing that 140 of them were less worthy of inclusion than this pile of feces. In an uninspiring seven minutes that rival “Kiss That Frog” in the Gabriel Hall of Shame, he prattles on and on about the evils of TV talk shows, blithely oblivious to the fact that it’s an easy target that’s been shot to pieces long before this. Even Weird Al Yankovic has covered this territory before. Gabriel’s lyrics on just about all of Up are thin and surface-level, and it makes me nostalgic for his Genesis days, when no one had any clue what the hell he was singing about, but damn, it sounded cool.

What’s especially maddening about Up is that Gabriel has, just recently, given us not one, but two compelling arguments that he hasn’t lost his touch. Ovo, a soundtrack to a show at London’s Millennium Dome that was released across the pond in 2000, is several degrees better than Up, and makes a more convincing case for one world music than anything else he’s done since Passion. Long Walk Home, likewise, is an invigorating and intelligent score to Philip Noyce’s The Rabbit-Proof Fence, and is oddly more melodic than this mainstream release.

So yeah, Up is disappointing, and yet I can’t quite bring myself to dismiss it. I have the nagging feeling that I’m going to end up coming to terms with this album in the next few months, and may have to post a second review. For now, though, I can’t quite understand why Up took 10 years to put together. While better than a lot of his more recent material, it’s not nearly the masterpiece we deserved after a decade of secretive work. It’s tempting to say that Gabriel is better than this, and if not for Ovo, I’d be wondering if, in fact, he is anymore.

One good thing – if ever I’m feeling low about my own lack of accomplishment in the last 10 years, I know I can listen to this and feel a lot better…

The longer columns are still in the works – finding the time has been difficult lately, but trust me, thousands and thousands of words are coming your way soon. Before I go, I need to get in an early word of recommendation for the new Beck, Sea Change, which I’ll review in depth next time. For once, a Beck album lives up to the hype.

See you in line Tuesday morning.