It’s no secret that I attended Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois this year basically to see one band.

They’re called the Lost Dogs, and they’re sort of a nexus point for a number of great spiritual rock bands. They’re made up of members from three of my favorite acts: Derri Daugherty from the Choir, Terry Taylor from Daniel Amos and Mike Roe from the 77s. And since I’ve wanted to see the Choir, DA and the Sevens play since the early ’90s, and all the Dogs were going to be there, it was a no-brainer for me to take advantage of my newfound geographical proximity and go to C-Stone for the first time.

And yeah, the Dogs and their respective bands were great, but I’m so glad I went for a number of other reasons. I got to meet everyone I’ve ever wanted to meet from this corner of the musical galaxy, and I got introduced to a few new bands I plan to follow forever. I also got completely turned around on one act in particular I’d been resisting, and got to see the remarkable artistic growth of another I’d loathed for years. And, of course, I bought 24 CDs, 14 of them brand-spankin’ new, and I’m here to tell you all about them.

First, though, the festival itself. Cornerstone has been an annual thing for 18 years, and typically draws between 20,000 and 30,000 people. It’s billed as a Christian rock festival, but if you’re not in the mood to be preached to, don’t worry about it. Hell, they had Pedro the Lion on the main stage this year, despite the fact that David Bazan’s work is often littered with profanities and offers no easy answers. Best of all is the price: $65 for advance tickets, $85 at the gate, for a week-long event. That price includes camping as well, as Cornerstone takes place on this huge farm in the middle of nowhere.

And the bands are more than worth twice the price. I’d have paid that amount just to see the 77s tear through their two-hour set, and I got 35 more concerts on top of that. I even missed two days, and feel like I got more than my money’s worth. It’s sort of sad to see so few people turning out for such great shows, but then again, Cornerstone is an intimate affair at its best, a secret you’re sharing with only a few, and that makes it somehow more special. (Although I wish someone at some major label somewhere would just take a listen to Mike Roe…)

If there was a catchphrase for the Dogs’ shows, it was this: “We used to play the big rooms.” Terry Taylor delighted in chuckling that line out, mostly because, for more than 20 years, none of these guys have ever played the big rooms. The extensive catalogs of Daniel Amos, the Choir, the Sevens, and numerous other Cornerstone bands are waiting there, like buried treasure, to be discovered. Once you hear this stuff, you won’t believe that millions of people across the globe aren’t lining up for tickets to these shows. The small, select fanbase has them all to themselves. For the fans, it’s the best of both worlds, but for the bands, it’s a sad state of affairs, even though they’re appreciative of every fan they have.

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The first show I caught at C-Stone was an acoustic set by a guy named Bill Mallonee. This guy looks like Guy Pearce, sings like Bruce Cockburn’s rowdier younger brother, and plays a mean guitar. He also writes a decent Americana-tinged pop song, as you can hear on any one of his 14 albums. Truth be told, I’ve only heard a few, but samples from the others have done nothing to dissuade me of my opinion.

Mallonee used to be the leader of a band with the unfortunate name of Vigilantes of Love. The VOL has always been a money-losing proposition for Mallonee, and so last year, after the two best VOL albums (1999’s splendid Audible Sigh and 2000’s poppier Summershine), he broke up the band and pursued a solo career. His first solo album, Fetal Position, came out last month. However, when it came time to tour behind that record, he called the same musicians back and made it a VOL tour. They now go by the hysterical name Bill Mallonee and the Trophy Wives.

I’ve been trying to be a Mallonee fan for a while now, and haven’t managed it. The problem, I discovered, is that for his entire career, Mallonee has been trying to capture his live sound in the studio, and it just hasn’t worked. He’s electric live, a powerhouse of energy, and he turns simple rockers like Audible Sigh‘s “Goes Without Saying” into dramatic rides. Give him a real rave-up like Summershine‘s “Putting Out Fires With Gasoline,” and then hang on. The Trophy Wives show was a revelation. (Special props to Anne, who’s been trying for months to make me a fan. Mallonee himself managed it in two hours.)

And that’s part of my disappointment with Fetal Position. I had heard a number of the songs in a live setting first, and they cranked, especially the brisk “Life on Other Planets.” Hearing them again decked out in studio trickery was a diminishing experience. Opener “She’s So Liquid” has a high-wire falsetto part in the chorus that brought an instant smile to my face live. On record, it’s not nearly as ingratiating, especially since Mallonee’s guitar is processed and swirled a bit too much.

If you accept that the albums will never be as good as the concerts, though, Fetal Position ain’t bad. It continues the ornate yet guitar-centered poppiness of Summershine and adds a few new twists: the piano-driven “Wintergreen,” for example, or the subtle “Crescent Moon.” His lyrics are, as usual, in fine form here as well, a mixture of Cockburn and Springsteen filled with keen observation. There’s really nothing wrong with it, but I’m hopeful that someday Bill Mallonee will find a way to translate his terrific stage shows into equally terrific studio works.

Pick up Fetal Position as well as a whole bunch of Mallonee’s back catalog from his new label, www.pastemusic.com.

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The other guy I wasn’t too keen on seeing was Michael Knott. I’ve always kind of hated Knott, even though I’ve perversely sought out and purchased everything he’s ever done. Lest you think that’s not a big undertaking, Knott has made, under various names, more than 25 albums. Until recently, each one has left me vaguely cold. Knott often stops short of writing whole songs, preferring to let the noise and power of the guitar carry everything for him. The names may change (Lifesavers, L.S.U., Aunt Bettys, Bomb Bay Babies or just Michael Knott), but the sound rarely does.

It turns out, though, that Knott has spent the last 20 years or so battling alcoholism, and his recent rehab stint may have been the best thing that ever happened to him. At his concert, of course, he was suitably maniacal, preening and lumbering across the stage like a crazed rock god with painted-on sideburns. At one point, he knelt by the edge of the stage, scraping at his eyes for a full four minutes. At another (actually during “Sorry”), he wrapped the microphone cord around his neck and raised it behind his head like a noose, which he held tightly until he turned red. He screamed, he spit, and he always went for emotion rather than precision. It’s no wonder audiences have come to see him since the ’80s.

But the concert wasn’t the eye-opener for me. Knott has lately been making (gulp) good music, not just pummeling his audience with repetition. This trend started last year with his finest solo album, Life of David. There was a palpable sense of penitence on that record, a shame and a sorrow that somehow translated to finely crafted songs like “Candle Killing Light” and “Halo.” Or like “Chameleon” and “Shoe Gazer.” Or, hell, like the whole album. It’s far and away his best.

But his two new ones aren’t far behind. Both the full, rocking Comatose Soul and the stripped-down, sweet Hearts of Care show Knott’s newfound sense of craft, which only appeared sporadically in the past. Comatose Soul opens with a typical Knott tune, the thumping “Cruisin’ Ride,” but swiftly veers into more complex territory with “Callous Wheel” and the great “Pusher.” The latter song revolves around the line, “If you don’t want me to jump off this bridge, you might have to do something about it,” the most unsentimentally honest cry for help I can remember hearing.

Highlights abound from there, including the so-cheesy-it’s-cool synthesizer line on “Pop Goes the World,” the swirling melody of the title track, and the veddy British “Gold.” Unlike most of Knott’s catalog, Comatose Soul keeps surprising you all the way through to the end, the summery “Lollipops and Daisies.” It’s a painful album in places, dealing as it does with addiction, recovery and loss, but it’s an honest and complete one that’s actually quite impressive.

Knott plans to release Soul independently, and hence he made signed and numbered pre-release copies available at the show. His other album, though, is officially out on Northern Records, home of Cush and the Violet Burning (whom we’ll get to in a moment). Hearts of Care was produced by Andy Prickett, who used to play with the late, lamented Prayer Chain and now anchors both of the above-named bands. It features voice, acoustic guitar, harmonica and violin, and that’s it. It also includes some of the sweetest and most off-kilter songs Knott has ever written.

“And I Love You Girl,” for example, rises on a dissonant violin line that stands at odds with the simple love song lyrics. “She Steals This Heart” makes fine use of violinist Beth Spransy and Knott’s own weary voice. The title song strums and shimmers, and “Wasting Time” finds Knott playing off of Spransy’s sprightly voice well. All in all, it’s a very successful collection, even if the harmonica and violin sometimes clash, and it shows that Knott doesn’t need furious guitar playing to be effective.

Both new albums are pretty good introductions to Knott’s little corner of the world, and unlike some previous efforts, they get you on their side quickly. Hearts of Care is available at www.northernrecords.com, and they have sound clips there as well. I don’t know where or when you’ll be able to pick up Comatose Soul, but keep checking his official site at www.michaelknott.com.

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How cool is Northern Records?

Wait, here’s a better one: How cool is Andy Prickett? He’s an absolute master of guitar tone, and can turn one note into the most glorious and agonizing personal experience of this or any other lifetime. As a producer, he’s helped make some of the best-sounding platters available, like the Autumns’ gorgeous Winter In a Silver Box. As a player, he’s astonishing, whipping off complex lines and rhythms and then, two heartbeats later, adding finely woven textures to the song’s foundation. Musicians love to work with the guy because he always gives them what they need.

And despite his considerable talents, he apparently enjoys being in the background. He’s a born rock star, but he shuns accolades for both bands he’s in. The Violet Burning is vocalist Michael Pritzl’s project, and Prickett is content to stand to his right, adding soaring tones and snarling rhythms to Pritzl’s songs while the focus remains squarely on the voice and the lyrics. Cush, meanwhile, is a collective of anonymity whose membership and sound changes with each release. That makes it impossible to single anyone out, and Prickett apparently likes it that way.

Well, tough for him, ’cause I’m going to single him out anyway.

The Violet Burning show at C-Stone was a loud, lovely festival of sweet, weightless guitar, almost entirely provided by Prickett. Pritzl sang his little heart out, and his songs are pretty amazing, but they usually suffer when Prickett isn’t playing on them. Versions of tracks from the first two Prickett-less VB albums (Chosen and Strength) were twice what their studio counterparts were, especially the standout “As I Am,” and the new material was just great. Through it all, Prickett basically stood in one spot, chewing gum and making the most beautiful noise you’ve ever heard.

Of course, I don’t want to slight Michael Pritzl, who is as nice a guy as you could ever want to meet. His songs are epic constructions, often reaching eight minutes, and his voice is sweet and powerful, a combination few can pull off. Pritzl is a major talent, but in conjunction with Andy Prickett, he’s a musical force.

There is no new Violet Burning album yet, but there is the next best thing: a Pritzl/Prickett project called The Gravity Show. The album is called Fabulous Like You, and that tells you a lot of what you need to know about it. Despite some glam-pop overtones in the first few tracks, the Gravity Show is like a miniature Violet Burning album, especially when you get to the slower, more epic numbers like “Worlds Apart” and “Halo.” Remarkably, it never sounds like a side project – Pritzl’s voice is in fine form, and Prickett, well, what’s left to say about him? This is a cool record.

And then there’s the new Cush, which, like the previous two, is just titled Cush. As strange as this collective normally is, this is their strangest outing yet – a collection of old and new spirituals. I’d say “done Cush style,” but there is no set Cush style, and that’s one thing I love about them. You never know what you’re going to get. This time you get old-time gospel, like the claps-and-moans leadoff track “Run Mary Run” and the low, acoustic “We Shall Walk Through the Valley in Peace.” And then they throw you a curve ball – a straight acoustic rendition of the old Prince song “I Would Die 4 U.” As usual, there’s no mention of who did what, and on this one, they don’t even provide a list of who’s involved. It’s just Cush, and like always, it’s just great.

You can get everything Cush, the Gravity Show, some Violet Burning and cool records by Frank Lenz, the Lassie Foundation, Charity Empressa and others at www.northernrecords.com. The label is co-owned by Prickett and some of his fellow ex-Prayer Chain bandmates, and it’s a textbook example of great musicians charting their own destinies.

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Cornerstone is, if my experience is any indication, a great place to discover new music. Here are a few groups and artists I happened upon during my week:

Beki Hemingway used to be in a great punk-pop band called This Train, refusing again and again to take herself seriously. Her solo career, however, is proof that she can make terrific music that doesn’t need to wink at you. Equal parts Aimee Mann and Chrissie Hynde, Hemingway floated through a set of swell guitar-pop tunes from her second full-length, Words For Loss For Words, on the acoustic stage, and the only difference between the show and the record is the addition of electric guitars on disc. From the superb breakup song “Only Thing Worse” to the hopeful lilt “Siouxanne” to the folksy admonishment of modern culture “The Crows of Cashel,” this album is just great. She even covers soft rock hit “Just Remember I Love You” and makes it listenable.

There is one standout stunner on Words, though, and it’s called “To Spare You.” It jumps points of view so effectively at the end (“I say it’s me I’m sparing but that really isn’t true, it’s me that needs to be spared by you”) that it sends chills, and her husband Randy Kerkman’s acoustic work elevates it from mere pop song to real statement. This could come close to the ol’ Top 10 List this year. Check her out at www.bekihemingway.com.

The Elevator Division is a four-piece propulsive rock guitar unit that shimmies and shakes like the best of Sense Field and Fugazi. When they’re firing on all cylinders (as they are on their full-length debut Movement), their guitar lines weave in and out with startling originality over a bone-crushing rhythm section that never lets up. Their new EP is called Whatever Makes You Happy, and comes in a hand-stenciled cardboard sleeve that’s worth the $5 price all by itself. Dig them at www.elevatordivision.com.

By far, the best band I discovered at Cornerstone, though, is a six-piece from California called Ester Drang. Imagine if Radiohead had moved into the atmospherics of Kid A but had retained all the fullness and melody of OK Computer. Now imagine that with the aforementioned Andy Prickett on guitar. Ester Drang played a set that moved like a living thing, rising and falling in waves and swirling about itself. Their songs are coiling beasts, snakes eating their own tails, shifting every which way on changing time signatures and unorthodox beats. Their sound is layered and thick, yet lighter than air.

Ester Drang has an incredible album out called Goldenwest, their second, and it fulfills the promise of the live show and then some. Opening with the piano-driven title song, this epic monstrosity plays like a single piece of music, winding through the complex “Repeating the Procedure” and the ornate, sleigh-bell-driven “Words That Cure” before winding up at the sweet “Felicity Darling.” It packs more punch in 50 minutes than many bands do in twice that, and hopefully sets the stage for a long and wonderful career for these talented boys. Get thee now to www.esterdrang.com and purchase it.

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There is one show I wish I had seen at C-Stone: the multi-artist Brian Wilson tribute that Silent Planet Records put on. It likely was terrific, and all I have to go on for that opinion is the CD around which the tribute was based. It’s called Making God Smile, and it’s 26 tracks of inventive interpretations of Beach Boys and Brian Wilson songs by some great artists and a bunch of talented unknowns.

Of the more famous folks, there’s Phil Keaggy delivering a note-perfect run through of “Good Vibrations,” Sixpence None the Richer doing a lovely take on “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times,” and my boys the Lost Dogs singing a nearly a cappella rendition of lost track “With Me Tonight.” Other standouts include Aaron Sprinkle (of Poor Old Lu) doing a great medley of “I Know There’s an Answer” and its doppelganger “Hang On To Your Ego,” Phil Madeira playing an instrumental version of “Heroes and Villains,” Terry Taylor half-laughing his way through “Vegetables” and Rick Altizer making your jaw drop with his one-man rendition of “Surf’s Up.”

I do want to mention one in particular, though. There’s a guy that everyone at Cornerstone has seen, either tuning a guitar or running to get a capo, or maybe even playing the occasional bass part. His name is Jeff Elbel, and he has the crap job of being everyone’s roadie while hopefully garnering an audience for his band, Ping. Well, Jeff has a great voice, plays guitar well, and put on a great show, which almost no one at the festival saw. It’s a shame, really, but hopefully his swell reading of “You Still Believe In Me,” complete with glorious harmonies, will increase his profile beyond that of super-roadie.

You can get Making God Smile at www.silentplanetrecords.com. It’s worth it.

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Look at how much space I’ve used up, and I haven’t even gotten to the really good stuff yet.

Steve Hindalong told a great story at the Choir’s acoustic show on Thursday. Hindalong has two daughters, 11-year-old Erin and 13-year-old Emily. One evening while the family was out at a restaurant, Erin asked innocently, “Do you think anyone will come up and want to get Daddy’s autograph?”

To which Emily responded, “Oh, Erin, the Choir used to be popular, but now Derri and Dad are just two old men walking around.”

Old they may be, but they sounded great. The Choir was the only major band at C-Stone without a new album to plug, but I wanted to mention them anyway, because seeing them live has been a decade-long dream of mine, and I got to do it twice, and they didn’t disappoint. The acoustic set was great, featuring a revved-up “To Cover You” and a stripped -down “Yellow Skies.” Hindalong proved himself as one of the great drummers once again, eschewing the full drum kit for one snare, one tom and a tambourine between his knees. The full electric show was amazing, with guitarist Derri Daugherty showing just how much noise he can make. In a break with tradition, they started with “Restore My Soul” and came crashing to a conclusion with an extended “Circle Slide.” Dream come true.

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Terry Taylor starts every show with an obnoxious, throaty, bellowed, “Howareya?” He got four chances to use that line at C-Stone: two Lost Dogs shows, a solo set and a fan-freakin’-tastic concert with his band Daniel Amos. Throughout the DA show, Taylor made reference to the age of his fans, playing mostly old stuff from the Alarma Chronicles (1981-86), and he only managed to get the lethargic audience to its feet for the mandatory participation number “Dance Stop.” Still, they rocked, securing the spot for second-best show I saw at Cornerstone, and it was really cool to hear old favorites like “New Car” and “Travelog” alongside soon-to-be-classics from the new album Mr. Buechner’s Dream, like “Author of the Story” and “Joel.”

The Dogs were similarly wonderful, playing up the kvetching rock star schtick they’ve been perfecting for years. “We used to play the big rooms,” Taylor said, to which Mike Roe instantly replied, “We used to play the big tents, too. Now we just wear ’em.” There should be a new Lost Dogs album out by the end of the year, although they played nothing from it. “Bullet Train” was great, though, and they dedicated the mournful “The Great Divide” to their fellow Dog, the Late, Great Gene Eugene.

Taylor has two new pieces of music, although one of them takes some explaining. In 1995, Daniel Amos released their most misunderstood album, the conceptual Songs of the Heart. It’s the story of Bud and Irma Akendorf, an aging couple who decides to take one last trip across America. The songs are simple yet strange, and most people (or most of that small number who heard it) just didn’t get it. Complicating the matter further was Taylor’s decision to play the part of Bud Akendorf vocally, adopting a low, rumbling, weary tone throughout. Many thought he’d simply lost his vocal range, not paying attention to the fact that he did all the high harmonies himself as well.

At any rate, Songs has remained the weird cousin to the rest of DA’s output, and Taylor has decided to rectify that a bit. Hence, the three-CD book set When Everyone Wore Hats, a reinterpretation and explanation of the Songs of the Heart album. Taylor has done a good job of making this relatively inscrutable project accessible. In addition to the original Songs album, you get a complete reinvention of same on disc two – acoustic arrangements with the full range of Taylor’s vocals. You also get two new songs, and Taylor reading selections from the 100-page book, on disc three. He’s done everything he can do to invite you in.

Does it work? Largely, yeah. I came away from Hats with a greater understanding and appreciation of Songs of the Heart, both of its original concept and of how short it falls of conveying that concept. Nearly without exception, the new acoustic arrangements work better than the originals, since the focus is more on the fantastic lyrics, and Taylor actually sings. “When Everyone Wore Hats” itself is a great song, with a lyric to die for – a particularly unsentimental salute to his father’s generation. (“When everyone wore hats, in the land of immigrants and pilgrims, the world came rolling off their backs and landed on their children’s.”) The original suffered from overproduction and that low, uninspiring vocal, but the new version is clean and perfect. Taylor leaps into falsetto for the chorus, which finally soars as much as it always should have.

In fact, even lesser songs like “The Organ Bar” benefit from the new arrangements, and when it comes to tunes that were already swell, like “Loveland” and “Get Back Into the Bus, Aloha,” the new settings take the songs to another level. Still, I’m glad that both versions of the album are included in Hats, if for no other reason than to have the full band cover of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” that opened the original. When Everyone Wore Hats is a successful reworking of a fairly unsuccessful album, one that will never be my favorite DA record, but one that has moved up a few notches because of this effort. I’d say that makes it time well spent.

At his solo show, Taylor played the entirety of his second new album, the six-song solo EP LITTLE, big. Thanks to a bizarre backing track setup, the show sounded exactly like the album, which is covered in synthesized instrumentation like a miniature low-budget Pet Sounds. Which isn’t far off, since Taylor has said he was inspired by his participation in the Brian Wilson tribute. Horns, strings, whistles, bird noises and bells come flitting in and out of all six songs, which are set to electronic drums and synth beds.

And true to its title, LITTLE, big is a study in dichotomy. The songs themselves are small, concerning mundane matters like family life, good friends and clever cats, but the sound is huge, nearly full to bursting. It’s an epic about tiny things that comes in at roughly 20 minutes, and fittingly enough, half of it is excellent, while the other half is less successful. “Molly Is a Metaphor” is a great name for a song, just not this song, all about the family feline, and the unabashed sentimentality of “Oh, Sweet Companion” and “Rob’s and Carolee’s” stays on one level. Taylor usually delves deeper than this.

But the other half, though – the title track is a mini Brian Wilson suite complete with harmonies and crashing percussion, “Lovely Lilly Lou” revels in its silly alliterative nature while bopping along to a Beatlesque groove, and the closer, “Mama’s In the Desert, Daddy’s In the Sky,” is a treasure. Taylor lost his father two years ago, and this song is the first time he’s dealt with that head-on. It’s a sad, sweet love song for his mother, one in which Taylor lays himself bare once again, reminding you that when he’s inspired, he’s practically peerless. All by itself, that song is worth buying LITTLE, big. (And yes, there is a full-length album on the way called Big.)

Get both new records, and a host of other stuff, at www.danielamos.com. If you haven’t heard the band before, a good starting point is the incredible new album, Mr. Buechner’s Dream.

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It would take a truly great concert to outdo Daniel Amos, but the following night, the 77s did just that.

I don’t care if any of you reading this ever make it to Cornerstone, though I hope I’ve made it sound somewhat appealing. But if you can, try to catch the 77s live somewhere. They’re the best band that no one in America knows, a rollicking three-piece that can stop on a dime, led by a guy who ranks as one of my two favorite guitarists, Michael Roe. For those of you sick of hearing about the guy, the hope is that I’ll nag you into at least trying one of his more than 20 superb albums, or into catching him on stage someday. If you’ve never trusted me on anything before, trust me on this guy. He’s amazing.

The 77s put on the best damn rock ‘n’ roll show I’ve ever seen, crashing from the powerhouse “Woody” through the punishing “Rocks In Your Head” to the encore, a note-perfect rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” Now, think about that for a second – Zep’s version is arranged for four players, which means that Roe played Jimmy’s part and sang Robert’s part at the same time. Meanwhile, bassist Mark Harmon and drummer Bruce Spencer hung together with Roe like a well-tuned machine.

Midway through the show, the band played all of their new EP, Direct. Man, what a disc this is. In six awesome songs, the 77s outdid their whole last album, A Golden Field of Radioactive Crows. It’s softer and sweeter than that album, for one thing, and trades in melody and nuance more than the band has done in a while. The new single, “Dig My Heels,” would be a smash hit if Tom Petty sang it, and that acoustic number cascades into the near-epic “Lifeline” and the Grateful Dead-ish jam “Take Your Mind Off It.” Also outstanding are the electrified opener, “Born on Separate Days,” and the love song “Perfect,” which is. Oh yeah, and the acoustic “Roesbud” (not a typo) is great as well. Direct is too short, certainly, but it ranks as one of my favorite 77s discs.

If that had been all Roe released this year, I’d be fine with it, but he had to go and make two more albums worthy of attention. The first is the second installment in his and Mark Harmon’s instrumental series, which began with Daydream. The new one is nothing like that one. It’s called Orbis, and it’s the work of insane men. It’s doused in fluttering electronic drums, clanging keys and some of Roe’s most bizarre guitar playing. It tells the story of a space mission gone awry in 74 mindboggling minutes, and though it plays like one long composition, there are songs, with titles like “Mars Bars,” “Spaceman 7” and “Funky Planet.” The centerpiece is the 16-minute “Some Young Moon,” a beautiful ambient exploration that shows off a previously unheard side of Roe. Sure, it’s self-indulgent, but it’s also splendid.

And finally, there’s the real prize, a 27-minute solo EP called Say Your Prayers. I’ve been waiting for Roe to make an album like this since first hearing his acoustic live set It’s For You. Prayers is just Roe and his acoustic, exploring all sides of his personality (as embodied in the title, which evokes both spirituality and an impending right hook). The results are fragile and beautiful, and remind me of nothing more than the album that inspired this column’s name, Simon and Garfunkel’s Wednesday Morning 3 A.M.

Highlights include “The Itch is Back,” an ode to learning to live; “Sunshine Down,” a sweet song that contains, as Roe said, “the stupidest lyrics he’s ever written, so sing along”; and the title song, the dreaded Song For His Daughter, that he somehow manages to make indelible. (It even includes a sly stab at the censored title of his 1992 album, Pray Naked: “Say them clothed, say them bare, say them in your underwear…”) Every song here is worth treasuring, though, from the sad reverie of “20 Years Gone” to the sarcasm of “Lutheran Hymn” to the flat-out prayer of “Hobo Messiah,” which concludes with the refrain, “Come and see that love is good.” Yes, it is, and so is this album, another shining standout in a career full of them. Michael Roe’s guitar and voice could make a deaf man weep, and will break your heart even if you don’t think you have any heart left to break.

For the 77s, go to www.77s.com. For Roe’s solo stuff, go to www.michaelroe.com.

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One final grace note: For the last concert of my festival, I caught Sixpence None the Richer on the main stage, who played all of their new album, Divine Discontent, out on September 24. It’s beautiful, especially the closing number, and it provided the perfect capper to a week of wonders.

Thanks for plowing through this enormous set of reviews. We’ll be back to regular size next week, with a look at the new Counting Crows, among others.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I love the guitar.

I can’t play a note, of course. I make up for this by being a world-class champion air guitarist. I flail, I dance about, but most of all, I contort my face the way I’ve seen guitarists do when they hit a particularly resonant note. Seriously, you’d think I was a pro, if not for the complete absence of a guitar. In my head, I’m Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen and Frank Zappa all rolled into one. In reality, as several of my helpful friends have noted while laughing their helpful asses off, I look like I’m going into a grand mal seizure.

But I can’t help it. I love the sound of the guitar. It’s one of the few instruments that can call forth an emotional reaction from me all by itself. (Piano is another, and I can play that one.) A good guitarist can make you alternately pissed off and weepy, at his or her command. A good guitarist can make you sing, cry or shiver with chills, which is why it’s such a shame that the radio is so full of inexperienced six-string manglers.

Every Joe Satriani album is like a private guitar class, a textbook full of examples of the myriad textures and emotions available to the guitarist with the skill to bring them out. While so many so-called guitar heroes seem stuck on “ferocious roar,” Satriani manages to be loud, even searing, and still maintain his innate melodicism. There are very few Joe Satriani songs you can’t sing along with, even though he rarely includes vocals.

Strange Beautiful Music, Joe’s eighth studio album, includes 14 hummable numbers without words, and just when you thought he might have run out of ideas, what with the sadly boring Live in San Francisco last year emphasizing all of his weaknesses, he surprises with a fully realized, multi-layered work. It’s surprising because SBM is a return to the “classic” Satriani sound of Surfing With the Alien and Crystal Planet, but it adds new dimensions and some fascinating melodic choices to create something familiar yet fresh.

One thing Satch needs to work on is his song titles. They used to be cool and evocative, telling little stories (“Lords of Karma,” “Driving at Night,” “Flying in a Blue Dream”). Now, if he writes, for example, a song with a vaguely oriental melody, he’s apt to call the song “Oriental Melody.” I’m not making this up – “Oriental Melody” is the real name of the leadoff track on SBM. Elsewhere he whips out a seven-string guitar for a tune called, that’s right, “Seven String.” Not too imaginative.

But that’s forgivable, as the songs themselves are pretty inventive. “Oriental Melody” bops and grooves its way through numerous textures, as does “Belly Dancer,” which includes a charmed snake of a lead line. “Mind Storm” is pretty amazing, collapsing an epic journey into 4:10, and “What Breaks a Heart” bleeds with emotion.

There is one speed bump – a short cover of old surf tune “Sleepwalk,” the only remnant, apparently, of an historic meeting of the guitar minds between Satch and Robert Fripp of King Crimson. Truthfully, you can barely hear Fripp in the background, spreading his Frippertronics jazz all over the track while Satch plays a depressingly faithful rendition. These two could have traded licks for half an hour, and I wouldn’t have minded. Plus, they’re both unconventional composers, and I’d have loved to hear what they could have come up with together. To confine their collaboration to two minutes of someone else’s song is a crime.

And sure, it drags by the end, but all of Satch’s albums do, and he redeems himself with a closing trilogy that goes somewhere and, more remarkably, comes back by its conclusion. The gentle “You Saved My Life” closes out Strange Beautiful Music, and it sounds as though his guitar, at least, believes the sentiment. This is Satriani’s most successful project since The Extremist in 1992, incorporating the lessons learned on his blues and techno excursions back into an instrumental rock setting. As usual, bassist Matt Bissonette and drummer Jeff Campitelli are along for the ride, playing marvelously, but this is Satriani’s show, and it’s definitely one worth attending if you like the guitar.

Cool as he is, Satriani is not at the top of my list of favorite guitar players, but our next contestant is right up there. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: There are only two guitar players I could listen to for days on end and not be bored. One of them is Mark Knopfler, of Dire Straits fame, and the other is Michael Roe.

Roe’s playing has a fluidity and grace that only comes from two sources: years of practice and a generous helping of God-given talent. I’ve seen him play, and I’ve often wondered how invigorating it would be to be able to pick up a guitar any time you want to and do what he can do with it. Roe has, over a whole bunch of albums, taken on a number of styles brilliantly. His regular band, the 77s, is a rockin’ combo with bluesy overtones, but he waxes country on each Lost Dogs album, and his solo stuff is all over the map. Safe As Milk, all by itself, includes ’80s pop, gospel, boogie-rock, Van Morrison-style soul, and fragile acoustic fingerpicking. Oh, and his elastic voice matches each of these styles with aplomb, as well.

As if that weren’t enough diversity, Roe has recently launched an instrumental guitar series that opens up a few more musical doors for him. The first in this set is called Daydream, and is a collaboration with 77s bassist Mark Harmon. Daydream had minimal distribution when it first appeared some years ago, but now Roe has dressed up his baby in fresh new clothes and sent it out into the world on his own label.

This, my friends, is a sweet disc. It opens, coincidentally enough, with a similar cover of “Sleepwalk,” but Roe’s is subtler and serves more as an introduction to the 58 minutes of clean guitar bliss that follows. On beds of lush keyboards, Roe lays down some delicious solos, especially on “Amber Waves” and “Dancing Out on the Moonlit Nile.” There’s not much in the way of memorable melody here, like there is on Satriani’s disc, but Roe is more likely to sweep you away just with the flow of his playing.

Daydream is definitely mood music, but there’s quite a bit of musicality to it. It’s one of those discs that can send you somewhere else, but stands up to scrutiny as well, should you decide to stay where you are and listen intently. I’d recommend letting yourself go, however. By the time the nearly formless “Herald the Bud” fades into the closing reprise of “Sleepwalk,” you’ll undoubtedly feel like you’ve just returned from a pleasant journey. This isn’t fluttery new-age crapola, though – it’s a concrete musical work suffused with atmosphere.

And it just happens to sound really good on my air guitar.

You can buy Daydream at Roe’s brand-spankin’-new website, www.michaelroe.com.

I had hoped to include thoughts on the second installment of Roe’s instrumental series, the just-released Orbis, but my pre-ordered copy has not yet arrived. Since I’ll be reviewing two more of Roe’s new records in the coming weeks (the 77’s new EP Direct and Roe’s new solo acoustic disc Say Your Prayers), I’ll just add that in. I get to see Roe play four times this week – once with the 77s, once by himself and twice with the Lost Dogs – and I’m so excited I can barely get to sleep at night. Thoughts from Cornerstone and a whole bunch of new CDs when I return.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

An informal poll – who is more annoying?

a) The “You’re getting a Dell” guy
b) The “Can you hear me now?” guy
c) The “Zoom zoom” kid

I can’t decide. I seem to hate them all pretty equally. Every time one of them appears on my screen, I think, ‘Yeah, that one,’ so I can’t quite make up my mind. I think my own personal hell, however, will prominently feature all three of them spouting their catchphrases for eternity.

Feeling a little punchy tonight, as you can probably tell. A quick word about next week first – I am going to the big, beautiful, annual Cornerstone Festival in Illinois for the first time. This week-long event features all those spiritual pop bands I can’t get enough of, in the flesh, including the Choir, Daniel Amos, the 77s, Starflyer 59 and dozens more. What this means for you: My column, if it’s done, will go up on Tuesday next week. If it’s not, that means I’m taking the week off, which I can do because I posted on my birthday, so nyah. The following week will be a roundup of sorts of the festival’s multitude of new releases, including albums from the 77s, Michael Roe, Terry Taylor, Michael Knott, Cush, and more. Big freakin’ column, and I have to get it done that week, because I need to make room for new ones by Counting Crows, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews Band, the Orb, Filter and Beth Orton, to name a few. It’s a tight schedule, but I think I can handle it. You’ll know whether or not I can by next Tuesday, anyway.

So. New stuff.

* * * * *

For a band named Sonic Youth, Sonic Youth has aged remarkably well.

Who could have guessed in 1988 that the searing sheets of ugly beauty that made up their double album Daydream Nation in fact represented the band’s adolescence, and that the best and most complex material was yet to come? Over their first four albums for Geffen Records, SY perfected their signature sound, one that is at once delicately arranged and fiercely sloppy. You can never really tell how much of any given SY song was mapped out at the start and how much was made up on the spot.

One thing’s clear, though – the foursome (guitarists Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, bassist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley) have an almost telepathic connection with each other, and an exceptionally well-developed sense of harmonics. After a while of immersing yourself in Sonic Youth, it’s hard to go back to the standard chords proffered by most everyone else. SY create weaving walls of sound that flirt with dissonance and dance inches away from bedlam. That they almost always top it off with the most lackadaisical vocals you’re likely to hear is just part of the contrast.

Lately the band has been pushing the extremes of its sound, with 1998’s sprawling A Thousand Leaves and the double-disc avant-garde experiment Goodbye 20th Century. They really reined themselves in on 2000’s nifty NYC Ghosts and Flowers, offering a slice of Sonic Youth beat poetry to compensate for the lack of shifty soundscapes. Well, the shifty bits are back with the just-released Murray Street, named after the studio at ground zero in New York where they recorded it, but at 45 minutes, it’s still a bit of a comedown.

Ah, but it’s quite a good one, even if it never reaches the heights of Washing Machine or A Thousand Leaves. The band has, thankfully, cranked up the melody meter again, splicing their lengthy instrumental excursions into some of their most hummable tunes. Some will call that a sell-out, but I call it an achievement – they haven’t sacrificed any of their monolithic noise in crafting these arrangements. Murray Street is no more or less a pop album than Daydream Nation was, and is often just as gloriously chaotic.

Consider the sheer insanity “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style” degenerates into, or the extended dissonant conclusion to the 11-minute “Karen Revisited.” Consider, also, Gordon’s spitting strut on “Plastic Sun,” which manages to evoke a danceable beat around a song that isn’t at all danceable. But best of all, consider the elegant, elastic arrangement of “Rain on Tin,” a classic SY song if ever there was one. The dual guitars pirouette around each other, sometimes coming dangerously close but never crashing into each other. It’s almost as though they arranged it for strings and then played it on guitars.

It’s worth noting that for this album, the band hooked up with famous Chicago noise-monger Jim O’Rourke, who also produced Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Finding the beauty in noise seems to be O’Rourke’s forte, and the same can be said of Sonic Youth. They’ve been making this kind of delirious, fascinating noise for two decades now, and no one even comes close to surpassing, or even imitating them. They’re in a class by themselves.

* * * * *

Bruce Hornsby has called his ninth album Big Swing Face, thereby earning the prize for Most Misleading Title of 2002 so far. Simply put, folks, there ain’t no swing on here.

And while I was mildly disappointed at first to discover that Hornsby, one of the best piano players in modern music, doesn’t tickle the ivories once on this album, my sadness turned to elation as the disc unspooled. No, there’s no swing, but Big Swing Face is Hornsby’s most successful attempt to create a new idiom by mixing together all of his influences. The result is invigorating, a jolting trip to the 21st century by a genuine classicist.

If you look at Bruce Hornsby, or listen to him talk, you would think that funk and jazz would be out of this square white boy’s grasp. On the contrary, however, since disbanding the Range in the early ’90s, Hornsby has concentrated almost entirely on the jazzy side of his prodigious talents, with snippets of funk thrown in. His last studio album, the two-hour Spirit Trail, gave us the acoustic jazz-pop on disc one and the smooth electric pop on disc two, and his live album Here Come the Noisemakers brought the roof down with more than two hours of jazzy improvisation.

Pulling back from such huge statements, Big Swing Face is a mere 46 minutes, but I would easily trade the sprawl and inconsistency of both his most recent records for another trip through this thing. Hornsby’s stylistic amalgam defies easy description, but here goes: imagine Medeski, Martin and Wood mixed with the Grateful Dead and produced by Prince, combined with… well, with Bruce Hornsby, because his songwriting and playing style is as distinct as a fingerprint.

A good chunk of this album is set to slamming funk beats straight out of Prince’s Black Album, and when Hornsby augments his voice with wailing blues and gospel backups, the effect is a clash of organic and electronic that really works. Both “Take Out the Trash” and groovy closer “Place Under the Sun” thrive on that contrast, and the title track feels like a Delta blues jam session out of Paisley Park. Early favorite “The Chill” is epic, all electric pianos and soaring guitars surrounding a superb melody.

The album’s high point, however, and the apex of its concept is “This Too Shall Pass.” The song begins like a folksy reel played on electric piano, but two verses in, a flurry of electronic drums thunders in, elevating it to a new level. The organic and mechanical roughly caress each other for the duration, synth beds supporting a sweet guitar solo that leads back into the piano. It’s a stunner, and the closest Big Swing Face has to a mission statement.

Who could have guessed that hiding behind Bruce Hornsby’s adult contemporary facade in the late ’80s was an idiosyncratic artist willing to, as his song says, try anything once? Big Swing Face retains its experimental vibe even when delivering the sweet pop songs Hornsby is known for, and it manages the neat trick of updating his sound without feeling like a desperate measure. This is a keeper.

* * * * *

There’s no question of truth in advertising with the title of Geoff Tate’s solo debut – he named it after himself, and he stuck his ugly mug on the cover. He’s not the best-looking guy anyway, but the cover shot is a particularly bad one, and certainly won’t sell him more copies of this thing by itself.

There is, of course, a question of who’s going to buy this disc anyway, and whether they’ll enjoy it once they press play. Geoff Tate is the lead singer of Queensryche, who never made it big as a late-’80s/early-’90s metal band to begin with, and has maintained a small cult following after their biggest success with Empire in 1990. Here’s the thing, though: cult followings don’t really like it when you radically alter the sound that they fell in love with in the first place, which sort of tends to temper artistic experimentation because no one outside your cult following is going to buy your new record. It’s a trap, and you have to have incredible faith in your devoted audience to pull the rug out from under them and expect them to keep coming back.

All that is a long-winded way of saying that Geoff Tate sounds nothing at all like Queensryche, even at their most experimental. (Promised Land, their most underrated record, f’rinstance.) Those looking for their dose of thinking-man’s metal, a tag Queensryche has been saddled with for years, are gonna be really disappointed. Tate has made the same stylistic choice that Kip Winger did when he went solo – he’s made a mature, well-constructed album of progressive pop music that only very occasionally rocks.

But hell, isn’t artistic growth what it’s all about? Winger’s three solo discs are far and away the best work he’s ever done, and similarly, Geoff Tate rises above most of Queensryche’s catalog on ingenuity alone. Songs float on synthesizers, acoustic guitars and drum loops, but never turn to radio-ready mush. Tate’s songs are typically cerebral, even when dealing with the mundanities of love, and his voice has been cast against walls of guitars for so long that the nuances revealed in these clean productions feel like revelations.

And what a voice it is, as Queensryche fans well know. The first time you hear Geoff Tate sing will send shivers, no matter the setting, but it’s impressive to hear him bend and shape that operatic bellow to these mellower foundations. He’s especially effective on “Helpless,” a latin-tinged pseudo-dance track complete with flamenco guitars, and on the gorgeous “Every Move We Make.” The middle section of the album is slower than the beginning and the end, and contains the best tracks, like the lovely “In Other Words.”

Simply put, Geoff Tate is a risk, but it pays off artistically. It remains to be seen whether Tate will alienate all of his existing fans or gain some new ones, but at the very least, he can say he’s made an album unlike anything he’s done before. Some will derisively snort at the lack of guitars and say it sounds like he’s gotten old, but I say that if this is what getting old sounds like, then sign me up.

* * * * *

Next week, some discs I won’t rave as much about. Maybe.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I get weird looks from record store employees all the time.

It’s because I buy so much music, and in such strange combinations. I’m often asked if I’m buying for other people, and I have to explain that, yes, I plan on listening to everything I buy, and if I’m lucky, enjoying all of it. Music store clerks are so used to compartmentalization these days that the very thought of someone harboring an appreciation for both Harry Connick Jr. and Sepultura, for example, is enough to get them scratching their heads.

I mention this because I bought all four of this week’s discs at once, and I got one of the strangest looks I’ve ever received from the girl who rang me up. I’m betting it’ll work on anyone, so try it. Come to the counter with all four of this week’s review subjects and see what reaction you get. (If you truly want to duplicate my experience, throw in a copy of Wyclef Jean’s The Masquerade, which I also bought at the same time.)

And we’re off…

* * * * *

The last time I trashed an Our Lady Peace album, I lived to regret it, so I’m wary of doing it again.

Last year’s Spiritual Machines didn’t do it for me on first listen, or on second, so I let ’em have it in this column. I charged that OLP was nothing more than a standard alternative rock band with an interesting singer, and that the 10 songs on Spiritual Machines didn’t reach to the level of the futuristic concept the band had hung on them. There’s nothing special about it, or about them, I declared.

And then the album grew on me like a fungus on hormones. I found myself humming the songs at odd hours, and reaching for the album more often than I thought I would. I now consider it one of their best, and while it’s true it rarely transcends the realm of alt-rock, sometimes that’s enough, especially if the songs are well-crafted, as these are. The most striking element of Our Lady Peace’s sound remains the unique and elastic voice of frontman Raine Maida, who loops and swirls all over these memorable melodies. I almost put Spiritual Machines on my Top 10 List last year, which is saying something, considering the overall quality of that list.

And I will admit that Gravity, the Canadian foursome’s fifth album, is starting to grow on me as well, but I can’t imagine that it will come anywhere near the best records of 2001. This album is everything I charged Machines with being – it’s full of typical songs that disappear from memory 10 seconds after they’re over, and it sounds like just about every other alt-rock act on the radio.

Only Maida’s still-striking voice separates Gravity from similar-sounding works by the likes of Matchbox 20 or Everclear, and even that is muted here. Maida, who normally reaches for split-second high notes in his flawless falsetto mid-melody, here intones stuff that would make Rob Thomas yawn. Granted, he wrote most of these songs himself (as usual), so he’s not being forced into it, but there’s very little here that one could call interesting. It’s a shame to waste a talent like Maida’s, even if the rest of the band isn’t quite up to his standard anyway.

But it would seem that the band realizes what they’ve made – Gravity, true to its title, remains earthbound, never taking flight even when the arrangements make you think it will. There are, I think, a few reasons for this, beginning with the fact that Gravity is the first OLP album not produced by their “fifth member,” Arnold Lanni. While all the elements of the band’s sound are present in Bob Rock’s production, it’s missing the character that has set the band apart for four albums. Rock is also one of those guys that a label hires to “punch up” a band’s sound for maximum radio consumption, and Gravity sure sounds like it’s designed just for that purpose.

It’s not just the production, of course. The songs are all fairly standard, as if dictated by the label as well. First single “Somewhere Out There” has “big hit” written all over it, as do “Made of Steel” (perhaps capitalizing on Five for Fighting’s success with “Superman (It’s Not Easy)”) and closer “A Story About a Girl” (which practically apes the title of Nine Days’ hit from two years ago). Maybe it’s just my cynical nature, but this album feels to me like a desperate grab for an American audience. The band even appears on the cover for the first time, displaying the rugged good looks that will help teenage girls part with their parents’ money.

It’s possible that I’m going to be eating these words come December again, but I don’t think so. Gravity is every cheap and simple thing Spiritual Machines isn’t, and while it may signal the death of the band’s American record contract, that will hopefully open the door to a more artistically satisfying career in Canada, where they’re already household names. While I’d previously said that Our Lady Peace just isn’t that good a band, Gravity compels me to add that they’re much better than this.

* * * * *

You’ve gotta wonder if Jerry Cantrell is a Type O Negative fan.

The former Alice in Chains guitarist has recently signed to Roadrunner Records, the home of Type O, and released his second solo album, Degradation Trip. The cover is classic Type O, funny and scary at the same time, and full of that unnatural green color the band loves so much. And the album itself is a 72-minute slow plod, just like Type O’s last three records.

The similarities largely end there, however, and that’s sort of a shame. One thing Cantrell could learn from Type O is how to take himself less seriously. Degradation Trip, like his solo debut Boggy Depot, is a sloppy, sprawling pile of bitterness and simmering rage. There are serious songs on here with titles like “Psychotic Break” and “Hellbound,” and Cantrell sells us lines like “reside in darkness, thrive where most won’t go” without the wink and smile that accompanies all of Type O’s work. Maybe it’s just that I’m numb to this kind of thing, or that I’ve turned 25 and thus exited Cantrell’s target audience, but I just don’t buy it anymore.

It doesn’t help that, musically speaking, the album is chock full of very little. Back in ’92, Cantrell and Alice in Chains released Dirt, a compact and complex slab of tricky, twisty, slow metal that still stands up today. Degradation Trip is further proof, if any were needed, that Dirt was a fluke, a one-time deal with the devil for skill and imagination Cantrell has never displayed since. This album is nearly twice Dirt‘s length, and yet nothing sticks. Songs stay within a set groove, usually made up of two or three notes repeated, and Cantrell’s guitar slathers it in sloppy vomit. Former Faith No More drummer Mike Bordin plays on every track, and is hardly ever required to do more than plod along in 4/4 time.

There are some exceptions – “Give It a Name,” for instance, would have fit well on the final, self-titled Alice in Chains album, and “Solitude” is nicely constructed. For the most part, though, Degradation Trip is not one worth taking. It’s eerie, as well, to hear Cantrell’s voice out front. It’s a fine voice, naturally, but one can’t help but imagine the departed Layne Staley singing lead on top of it. The sad truth is that, for Alice in Chains fans, Cantrell’s solo work is always going to sound like half of what it should.

* * * * *

All right, enough with the negatives.

In 1998, Peter Gabriel announced the imminent release of his new album, called Up. In fact, he was quite distressed to learn that R.E.M. also had an album that year called Up, concerned as he was about the possible confusion that might create. (In a bout of hilarious synchronicity, Ani DiFranco also released an album that year called Up Up Up Up Up Up.) Gabriel announced he would voluntarily delay his own release date so as not to conflict.

Four years later, here we are, and still no Up from the Gabriel camp. They’re promising it sometime this year, but don’t hold your breath. The strange thing is, though, that Gabriel’s been just as busy as always. Last year he released OVO, a miraculous work that finally brought together all of his diverse world music influences into a seamless whole. OVO was the soundtrack to a show at London’s Millennium Dome, which Gabriel also oversaw. It was a huge, expensive, elaborate production worthy of the stellar music he composed to accompany it.

Additionally, he’s recently remastered and rereleased his whole catalog, front to back. The eight studio albums and two live records he’s made since splitting from Genesis in 1975 are all the evidence one should need that this guy’s a frickin’ genius. Anyone that can jump from the orchestral grandeur of his first solo album to the creepy soundscapes of his fourth in a mere five years is worth following, ’cause you never know what he’s going to do next.

Case in point – his new album that isn’t Up is called Long Walk Home, and it’s the soundtrack to a low-budget Australian film entitled The Rabbit-Proof Fence. Gabriel has long had a miniature side career as a writer of film scores, and in fact his finest work to date remains Passion, his amazing soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. On that record he melded his synth-laden dreamscapes with the glorious cacophany of dozens of African musicians, creating something ancient, modern and timeless.

He thankfully doesn’t try to repeat that trick here, although the recipe is the same. Long Walk Home features Gabriel’s synthscapes alongside percussion, vocals and traditional instruments from some of Australia’s most celebrated musicians. Just for effect he tosses in the London Symphony Orchestra and the Blind Boys of Alabama choir, and the result is marvelous. The story of The Rabbit-Proof Fence is that of a 14-year-old girl kidnapped from her family, who uses the titular landmark to find her way home across the outback. While most of the score is of necessity dark and foreboding, there are moments that swell and practically burst with well-earned hope.

Long Walk Home has one thing over Passion – it plays like a single piece of music. It ebbs and flows with a consistency not found in the previous work. Like Passion, though, its soaring moments are deep and powerful. “Running To the Rain,” in particular, has a wondrous crescendo of treated strings that may be this album’s finest half-minute. “Ngankarrparni,” which reportedly also appears on Up, is a stirring track that even finds room for Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green to chime in on guitar. He builds on that on closer “Cloudless,” which is simply beautiful, one of Gabriel’s best pieces.

Of course, this is not the Peter Gabriel of “Sledgehammer” and “Digging In the Dirt,” but rather his deeper, more spiritual twin, and Long Walk Home is a beautiful piece of work that will stand among his most important musical contributions. Like the best scores (and both of Gabriel’s previous ones), it exists as a separate entity from the film, and is evocative enough to conjure images rather than being chained by them. In short, I can wait for Up, because there’s no way it’ll be better than this.

* * * * *

The back cover of the new They Might Be Giants album, No!, announces it as their first disc made for the whole family. It figures that just as I make the case against thinking of them as a novelty band, they go and make a full-fledged novelty – a children’s album.

Or so it would seem, although TMBG fans would be hard-pressed to come up with many ways in which this album differs from their usual fare. It’s still twice as clever as anything around, it’s still catchy as hell, and it’s still wonderfully, hysterically weird. It’s also a bit revolutionary, in some ways, considering TMBG’s insistence on refusing to talk down to their younger audience. Johns Linnell and Flansburgh have basically made just another really cool album of really fun songs.

Take “Four of Two,” for example, a classic TMBG song if ever there was one. It’s the story of a guy who gets stood up, but has eternal hope because, according to the broken clock in the town square, his date still has four minutes to show up. He even nods off at one point and pulls a Rip Van Winkle: “At once I awoke to a futuristic world, there were flying cars and gigantic metal bugs, I’d grown a beard, it was long and white, but I knew that the girl would be coming very soon, for though everything had changed there was still that clock and it still said four of two.”

“John Lee Supertaster” is the tale of a guy with a superpower of sorts: “When he tastes a pear, it’s like a hundred pears, he’s got superpowers!” “The House At the Top of the Tree” is a recursive yet wholly logical story about the machinations one goes through to keep from being eaten. “I Am Not Your Broom” is a brief emancipation proclamation from a put-upon household item: “I’ve had enough, I’m throwing off my chains of solitude, I am not your broom…” Fabulous closer “Sleepwalkers” makes a potentially scary nocturnal activity seem less so.

And on and on. No! is one of the best albums for four-year-olds ever recorded, and the best part is that there are interactive animations included on the disc for 13 of the 17 tracks. I admit some skepticism when I first heard of this project, but John and John have pulled it off by making it just as cool as anything they’ve done. If there were a hundred more records like this, and a few hundred less from the likes of Barney and Elmo, I wouldn’t feel so cynical about the younger generations these days.

* * * * *

Next week, another bevy of bountiful delights, including the new Sonic Youth and the debut of Page McConnell’s Vida Blue.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

The floodgates are about to open on the summer music deluge.

Coming in the next two weeks are albums from (deep breath): Our Lady Peace, Wyclef Jean, Peter Gabriel, Jerry Cantrell, Soulfly, Joe Satriani, Fatboy Slim, Michael Roe, Orbital, Bruce Hornsby, Sonic Youth, Cowboy Junkies, Queensryche’s Geoff Tate and Vida Blue, the side project from Phish’s Page McConnell. Oh, and on the 25th, the long-awaited Jellyfish rarities box set, Fan Club, ships from Not Lame Records. Also on the way are records from Dave Matthews Band, Oasis, Counting Crows, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Orb, Terry Taylor, 77s, Cush, Starflyer 59, The Violet Burning, Robert Plant, Filter, Beth Orton, and yes, Def Leppard. And that’s just July.

So, lots of work cut out for us, and lots of big columns coming our way. Let’s get started, ‘kay?

* * * * *

One of the few times I’ve bought an album based on its placement in critics’ top 10 lists was in 1999, when Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill came out. It slipped under my radar when it was released, but I finally picked it up after every critic on the planet called it the best record of the year. After listening to all 70-some minutes, three words came to mind: come fucking on. And three more words, somewhat more depressing: lost the receipt. Ah well…

I still don’t get the acclaim, even though the album has grown on me, but assuming the best of intentions from the legions of critics, I’m not sure how Hill can remain a superstar while Meshell Ndegeocello stays a bit player. Hill made her mark by combining rap, jazz and soul with emotional delivery, and while that’s definitely a laudable ambition, Ndegeocello has been doing it for far longer, and doing it far better.

Hill has recently undergone a transformation, switching from a hip-hop base to a more acoustic and soulful vibe on her Unplugged album. This has, naturally, disturbed and confused the critics who praised her mix of styles. Interestingly, Ndegeocello has just made the same transformation in reverse. Those who bought her last album, 1999’s lovely Bitter, and are expecting more of the same from her fourth, the just-released Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape, will probably be reaching for that receipt after they hear the expletive-laced first verse of “Dead Nigga Blvd. (Part 1).”

Cookie is Ndegeocello’s most rap-inflected album to date. And yet, from that base point, she brings in dozens of other influences, and the final effect does resemble a mixtape. First single “Pocketbook” is a trippy hip-hop anthem, all beats and rhymes, but then “Better By the Pound” is covered in nifty percussion, “god.fear.money” sports a searing rock guitar part, and “Jabril” mixes in some jazz saxophone. Cookie is a liberal mixture of rap, pop, jazz, blues, soul and rock ‘n’ roll, and plays like something Prince would have in his private collection.

So why don’t I like it more than I do? Well, part of my disappointment stems from the near total lack of memorable melodies here, which is something that’s plagued Ndegeocello’s work since the beginning. Even Bitter, a slower, more organic album as a whole, just seemed to drift from one chord to another. Cookie is all about the groove, and while the grooves are pretty great, the end result is kind of listless. It’s the kind of album that floats out of my consciousness without sticking.

Still, while I wouldn’t vote Cookie for album of the year, it is admirable and well-made. Ndegeocello is using her platform to send a message to the streets here, with lyrics full of anti-violence paeans and spiritual uplift. Her own credibility is unassailable, and she’s crafted an album that speaks from experience and talks a difficult yet important game. While I definitely prefer the emotional roller-coaster of something like Bitter, Cookie is an album that could net Ndegeocello some of that acclaim her lessers have been getting for years.

* * * * *

More my style, however, is the latest lyrical wonderama from Warren Zevon. While one couldn’t be blamed for writing Zevon off years ago, he’s been on a roll lately. Last year’s Life’ll Kill Ya was classic Zevon, and the streak continues with his new one, My Ride’s Here. And part of the credit for that must go to his unlikely list of collaborators. For this album, Zevon bounced lyrical ideas off of a virtual who’s who of the literary world, including (and here’s a contrast) Hunter S. Thompson and Mitch Albom. Yeah, you read right – the guy behind Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas shares disc space with the guy who wrote Tuesdays With Morrie. That alone should get you to the record store in a hurry.

Musically, this is a Warren Zevon album, and there are pros and cons with that. After the acoustic bent of Life’ll Kill Ya, the raucous electric opening of “Sacrificial Lambs” signifies a return to the classic Zevon sound, sort of rock meets folk at a hootenanny. Still, the songs are all simple, relying on the same chords and progressions that make up most of his catalog. There are surprises – the Irish folk of “MacGillycuddy’s Reeks,” the dissonant strings of “Genius” – but if you’re looking for complexities, they ain’t here.

But much like Randy Newman, no one buys a Warren Zevon album for the music. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the lyrics on My Ride’s Here rock. Zevon’s poisonous worldview is in full effect, especially on “Basket Case” (based loosely on Carl Hiaasen’s novel of the same name) and Thompson’s contribution, “You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared.” The highlight is a little tune called “Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song),” which features David Letterman in a supporting role that doesn’t quite mesh, but provides laughs nonetheless.

The song I wish I’d written, however, is a collaboration with Larry Klein called “Genius,” all about bitter romance and the art of selling out. Cynical, nasty, witty – it’s everything a good Zevon song usually is. Verse two:

“There’s a face in every window of the Songwriters’ Neighborhood
Everybody’s your best friend when you’re doing well…I mean, good
The poet who lived next door when you were young and poor
Grew up to be a backstabbing entrepreneur
Albert Einstein was a ladies’ man
While he was working on his universal plan
He was making out like Charlie Sheen
He was a genius.”

In short, it’s just another Warren Zevon song, one of ten on My Ride’s Here, just another Warren Zevon album. If you liked him before, you still will. If you’ve never tried his stuff, this is just as good as any to start with. Remember that kid that stood brooding in the corner of the playground, wearing a t-shirt that read “Does Not Play Well With Others”? That kid grew up to be Warren Zevon, and if you ever wondered what that kid might have been thinking about you, here’s your chance to find out.

* * * * *

Next week, the floods come. It’ll be a big one, folks.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am 28 today.

I have officially outlived Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain.

I’m taking the week off to contemplate this and basically feel like the ancient old man I am. Fortunately for those of you who can’t live without a weekly dose of my wit and wisdom (uh-huh), I had the following column all ready to go last week. I decided to let my little tribute to Dave Rankin stand alone, which left me with a column in the can. Hence, you get an all new (well, new to you) rant this week, and I get seven uninterrupted days off. Works for me. Curtain goes up, lights go on. Let the show begin…

* * * * *

After September 11, many “experts” predicted that such a devastating attack at the heart of our country would signal the death of irony in our popular entertainment. Whether or not that’s true (and I highly doubt it is), it seems that America’s favorite court jester, the inimitable Eminem, was listening.

The biggest surprise of the Detroit rapper’s just-released third disc, The Eminem Show, is that he’s swapped his trademark satire for plain-spoken sincerity on virtually all of it. Em’s previous albums (1999’s The Slim Shady LP and 2000’s The Marshall Mathers LP, which I voted the best album of the year) traded in cartoon violence and sleight of hand, with Em’s three personalities juggling responsibility for each other’s words. Each jaw-dropping declaration came packaged with a ready-made cop-out and a deft satirical twist, with the end result being a subversion of the entire gangsta rap genre. Eminem set himself up as the ultimate unreliable narrator, hopping back and forth between the level-headed Marshall Mathers and the pathologically violent and dishonest Slim Shady, and in the end, he made you question everything that came out of every rapper’s mouth, including his own.

The first thing you’ll notice about The Eminem Show, should you get through all 80 minutes’ worth, is that Slim Shady only shows up once, in the instant classic single “Without Me.” Even that track, in context, is a portrait of an idea that’s run its course – Shady lashes out, as usual, but at the least controversial targets he could have picked. He slams ‘N Sync and Moby (Moby?!? What the hell did he ever do to anyone?), and while the barbs are clever, you get the sense that his heart’s just not in it as much as it used to be.

The rest of the album bears this out, as the remainder of the running time is given over to Marshall Mathers, the man behind the masks. It’s a daring move – Mathers has scrubbed away the greasepaint and created a first-person testimonial to his state of mind, an album as intimate and confessional as any six-string folkie’s efforts. In its best moments, The Eminem Show offers a glimpse behind the curtain at the fragile man holding the strings, and in its way, that’s even more bracing than all of Shady’s razor-sharp sobriquets.

Don’t get me wrong here – Mathers hasn’t made a record for moonlit walks in the park. The Eminem Show is just as raw, venomous and powerful as his previous efforts, only this time it’s real, which ups the stakes considerably. For example, Mathers’ legal disputes with his mother Debbie are well documented, arising as they did from backhanded jabs on both previous albums. (Shady even took an opportunity to verbally sodomize her on The Marshall Mathers LP‘s “Kill You.”) Still, you likely never took them quite seriously, which will probably leave you unprepared for “Cleaning Out My Closet,” this album’s savage evisceration of Marshall and Debbie’s relationship: “Remember when Ronnie died and you said you wished it was me? Well guess what, I am dead, as dead to you as can be…”

“Closet” is an extended poisonous assault, and its author doesn’t wink playfully once. Its exact opposite is “Hailie’s Song,” a sweet ode to Mathers’ daughter on which our faithful foul-mouthed irony machine actually sings, and it sounds for all the world like he means every word. “Hailie’s Song” is the album’s bravest moment, with Mathers standing naked on a bare stage and confessing, “My insecurities could eat me alive.” The fact that his voice is merely competent and often shaky only adds to the effect – if he could really sing, it wouldn’t be as fearless as it is.

In between those extremes, Mathers gives us further insight into his relationship with estranged wife Kim (immortalized as a murder victim in both “97 Bonnie and Clyde” and “Kim” on previous albums). Rather than the rage fantasies of albums past, though, here we get honest regret and mature understanding. Similarly, where most rappers would have turned the sex games of “Superman” into a litany of conquest, Mathers graces us with a picture of the guarded, cautious semi-swagger of a newly free man who’s been recently broken.

One of the album’s most exhilarating moments comes at the beginning, as Mathers pulls the curtain back on “White America.” The track serves as an explanation, in simple, deliriously biting terms, of the previous two albums and the cultural (and yes, racial) reasons for Mathers’ fame. The message is the same one it’s been all along – white America has never looked internally for the root causes of its downfalls. Mathers, a suburban white kid, connected with other suburban white kids by speaking their minds as Slim Shady, and his memo to the parents of his fans reads “your kids are just like me.”

Even “White America” is free of satire, however, preferring to take the straight approach. Similarly, the groovy “Square Dance” takes aim at war overseas with fastballs, not curves. Throughout the album, Mathers flirts with the responsibilities of fame, and even more poignantly, the personal responsibilities of fatherhood. Hailie Jade is at the center of this work, informing nearly every song, so it’s only fitting that she makes an appearance on the closing track, “My Dad’s Gone Crazy.” That song, one of the record’s definite highlights, contains the album’s kicker line, directed at America’s parents: “I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t let Hailie listen to me, neither.”

Beyond the surprise factor of a serious, introspective record from Eminem is the question of whether his multitude of fans will embrace such a work. Suffice it to say that if you’re looking for another slice of lyrical legerdemain mixed with pop cultural bitchslaps, you’d be better off listening to The Marshall Mathers LP again. Like any restless artist, Eminem is heading off in new directions, and hoping his fan base will follow him. The central conceit of his chosen genre, however, is insincerity – MCs are known for keeping the hard-edged front up at all costs. Eminem has chosen to wear his heart on his sleeve, and only time will tell if that’s seen as weak, or recognized as remarkably courageous.

As for the album itself, well, it’s overlong, self-obsessed, immaculately crafted and unforgettable. Eminem has thrilled in the past by leaping from one voice to another, contradicting himself from song to song, but on The Eminem Show, he proves what very few rappers have learned, but most acoustic folksingers have known all along – the only voice you need is your own.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I just heard about Dave Rankin.

I’m sure most of you reading this didn’t know Dave Rankin. Hell, I didn’t know Dave very well. I talked to him roughly a dozen times, and I interviewed him once for Face Magazine, but that was about it. Dave was the drummer for 6gig, one of the best bands in New England, and he made two records with them: the justifiably lauded Tincan Experiment and the reportedly superior Mind Over Mind, which comes out next month. He was a fixture of the Portland music scene, and a well-respected musician and human being.

According to his obituary, Dave died suddenly at his home on Monday. He was only 31.

As I said, I didn’t know Dave very well, but he made enough of an impression on me that I remember him fondly and vividly. Here are some things I remember about him:

He was as nice and welcoming a guy as you’d ever like to meet. He was a funny, funny man, one of those people who could read the phone book out loud and make it endlessly entertaining. Dave had one of those incredibly expressive faces that added a whole new level of wit to whatever he was saying.

And he was one hell of a drummer. Just monstrous. Log onto www.mp3.com/6gig and listen to “Hit the Ground” (which also appears on the soundtrack to National Lampoon’s Van Wilder) to see what I mean. 6gig’s sound tends towards the melodic side of the heavy music spectrum, which is a good thing, but Rankin’s drumming anchored them with a muscular and propulsive bedrock. He kept the rest of the band grounded so that they could soar fearlessly.

As I get older, I find reminders of my own mortality swarming about me every day, and this was another. I have a difficult time thinking of 16 as middle-aged, but every time someone approximately my age passes, I can’t help but wonder about how most of us watch our days go by, sure that there will be another and another. We should figure out how to make them all count, because 31 is just too young to run out of them.

Dave’s family has requested that any donations in his name be made to the Camden Rockport Animal Rescue League, at P.O. Box 707, Rockport, ME, 04856.

To find out more about Dave’s band, log onto www.6gig.com.

* * * * *

This is my 75th column, and I was going to celebrate it here, but I just don’t feel like dancing, even metaphorically, right now. This column was also supposed to contain a review of Eminem’s latest, but including that now seems tasteless. Next week, then. For now, take that extra time you were going to spend reading a thousand of my words, and go outside for a few minutes, breathe the air, and then call someone close to you and tell them you love them.

Life’s too goddamn short.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

For various reasons, I’ve been needing some reassurance lately that my analytical nature hasn’t completely overridden my ability to react emotionally to stirring works of art. Star Wars helped a bit, but I was too personally invested in the saga to really take my giddiness as any sort of sign. A few people have told me lately that I think too much, that I need to feel more when it comes to music and art in general, and so I’ve been waiting and looking for something that can provoke a completely emotional response in me, just to prove to myself that it can still happen.

And then this morning, I saw the season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a friend tapes it for me when I can’t make the original airdates), and wept like a two year old girl. Just cried, uncontrollably, for something like 10 minutes. And I think about it now, hours later, and I realize that it’s just a television show, and that there are countless silly and illogical things about it, and it still gets me. God, was that terrific.

And God, do I feel silly typing it as the lead-in for this series of analytical reviews of recent CDs, but you know what? The fact that I can still feel something as distant as a TV show so deeply means to me that anything and everything artistic should be able to make that same connection, and the fact that most of it doesn’t is not my fault. That moment of release, where your whole being is enveloped in its reaction to someone else’s expression, is what all of this analysis is about. Nearly everything I see and hear fails to make that leap, and all of this sound and fury I pump into reviewing these things is geared towards finding out why. When art hits the mark with me, I know it, and when it doesn’t, I wonder.

Here are a few more wonderings:

* * * * *

If you ever need proof that popularity is not based on merit, you need only look at the career of Neil Finn.

Here’s a guy who can justifiably be classed as one of the greatest living songwriters. He’s fronted a pair of great bands – first, the raucous and witty Split Enz, and then Crowded House, one of the finest pop ensembles since those four lads from Liverpool. There are four Crowded House albums, and every one of ’em is a masterpiece. Finn has gone on to a successful post-CH career across the pond (he’s a New Zealand native), first with his brother Tim in the Finn Brothers and then on his own with Try Whistling This, a twisty and complex pop album that signaled the end of his American record contract.

Finn’s follow-up to Try Whistling This is called One Nil, or at least it was when it came out last year in Europe and Australia. Nettwerk Records picked up both that album and a live record called 7 Worlds Collide and brought them to these shores, but One Nil (out this week here) didn’t survive intact. Two tracks have been dropped from the original, two more added and the running order has been completely reworked. The album has also been inexplicably retitled One All, ostensibly because Americans wouldn’t be familiar with the term “nil.” Never mind that the American translation would be more accurately One Zero…

Anyway, forget all that, because the album is right up there with the best stuff Finn has released, no matter what it’s called. Like Try Whistling This, the new album takes some time to sink in. These are not the immediate, direct pop songs of the Crowded House era. Finn has matured, and his four-minute marvels have matured along with him. Each song slowly unfolds and reveals hidden depths. There are no hit singles here, but there are 12 dreamy and ultimately fulfilling journeys that lead down unexpected paths.

Three of the best songs appeared previously on 7 Worlds Collide, and the new arrangements take some getting used to. The soaring “Anytime,” an atmospheric affair live, is here propelled by strong backbeats and ornate piano fills. I’m glad I have both versions, as the live one suits the song better, even though the album rendition fits in with the record’s overall tone. “Turn and Run” is just as magnificent in its studio incarnation as in its live one, but opener “The Climber” suffers a bit from a minimalist arrangement.

No such comparisons can drag down the other nine tracks, however, and all are, if not home runs, then solid triples. “Driving Me Mad” is built around one of Finn’s best hooks, “Last to Know” meanders pleasantly until it settles on a monster of a bridge, “Wherever You Are” floats by like a soft breeze, and “Human Kindness” is simply this album’s trickiest and most invigorating moment. The U.S. version concludes with the European single, the rollicking “Rest of the Day Off,” and the elegiac “Into the Sunset,” a sweet farewell.

The biggest problem with One All is that it’s over rather quickly. There’s no sense of grandeur or importance in these songs. Rather, it’s a subdued and subtle affair that demands attention to its sublime details. This is an album that grows more affecting with repeated listens, which is a sure sign that it won’t win back the acclaim that Finn received for the first Crowded House album. And the artist likely has no hopes that it will, since One All is less an event, and more just another great Neil Finn album. He’s stopped chasing fame and just settled into the role of one of the best and least assuming singer/songwriters in the world, and it’s a role that suits him well.

* * * * *

I paid $16 for the new Weezer CD, Maladroit. I wasn’t too surprised to find out that the 13-track CD clocks in at only 32 minutes, but come on, that’s 50 cents a minute. My phone bill is 40 cents a minute better than that.

I wouldn’t gripe so much, but Maladroit is not quite the one-two punch I was expecting after last year’s similarly brief Weezer (a.k.a The Green Album). That album was perfect – 10 simple, short songs that left you wanting more. Maladroit, on the other hand, might be the most sprawling and inconsistent 32-minute record ever made. In a way, it resembles 1992’s Pinkerton, which head nerd Rivers Cuomo has all but disowned. It covers a lot of similar ground.

For instance, there is deadpan emo sendup “Death and Destruction,” which takes a stab at a genre Weezer helped to create with Pinkerton. The entirety of the lyrics read: “I can’t say that you love me, so I cry and I’m hurting, and every time that I call you, you find some way to ditch me, so I learn to turn and look the other way.” “Slob” sees the return of Cuomo’s angsty voice, a la “No Other One,” and bemoans the life of a put-upon layabout. Both these songs are slow meanders, as is “Space Rock,” although that one’s just a mess.

Elsewhere, though, Weezer really strut their stuff effectively. The opening trilogy (if three songs adding up to six minutes can be called a trilogy) is classic stuff, including the single “Dope Nose,” with its straight-faced dumb-rock riff. “Slave” might be the finest two-minute slab of pop-punk these boys have come up with yet, and closer “December” is quite lovely. “Burndt Jamb” takes the place of “Island in the Sun” this time, but is less catchy.

I wouldn’t want to say Weezer rushed this album out, considering the five-year delay between their second and third records, but when you can seriously imagine 10 minutes being cut from a 32-minute album, some more work may have been beneficial. Maladroit is harsher in tone than their last effort as well, and the walls of guitar tend to grate after a while. It’s an overall less likable effort, which may have been the point, as Cuomo only seems happy when he’s miserable in some way. If history is any indication, Maladroit will be coolly received, and Cuomo will collapse back into another five years of self-loathing before re-emerging with something worth listening to more than twice.

* * * * *

Moby titled his new album 18 because there are 18 songs on it.

That’s the level of creativity and inspiration you can expect from this new effort by the unlikeliest pop star in the history of unlikely pop stars. Moby started as a revered techno DJ, creating his own spins on the James Bond theme and music from Twin Peaks. He also dabbled in ambient soundscapes which were miles behind similar work by Aphex Twin, to name one. Later, he made a great album in Everything is Wrong, one that expanded the boundaries of techno to include rock and ambient trance, and followed it up with an utter disaster of a guitar noise album called Animal Rights before stumbling ass-backwards into a successful mix with Play.

“Successful” may be putting it mildly – Play stayed on the charts for two years, yielded four or five hit singles, and songs from it will likely keep appearing in commercials and on movie soundtracks until the earth grinds to a halt and turns to dust. It’s hard to gripe about that, though, because Play is a spectacular album, messy and inconsistent and spiritual and full of grace. On Play, Moby married old blues and gospel recordings to his trademark synthscapes, and the result was breathtakingly fresh. Looking back on his career, though, one thing seemed certain: Moby was completely unpredictable.

Well, scratch that theory. 18 has the dubious distinction of being the first Moby album that sounds almost exactly like its immediate predecessor. We’ve all heard “We Are All Made of Stars,” the limp single, and while it may seem to signal a departure from Play, the next track dispels that handily. “In This World” sets a wailing gospel vocal over a beat and a synth backdrop, as does “In My Heart,” “One of These Mornings,” “The Rafters” and “I’m Not Worried at All,” to name a few. Moby takes a few turns at vocals, just like last time, on “Signs of Love” and “Extreme Ways,” and invites a few female singers to step up to the mic, just like last time, on “At Least We Tried” and “Great Escape.” The music is all depressingly similar to Play‘s mix of ambient synths and trippy beats, and even a collaboration with Sinead O’Connor (“Harbour”) fails to breathe any originality into the mix.

Which shouldn’t hurt this album’s popularity at all. Often people are upset when an artist follows a successful release with a clone, but in this case it should suit Moby’s newfound legion of fans just fine. When the Play formula works, it really works, and even though the immediate effect of most of this album is diminished due to its familiarity, the basic appeal of Play is present throughout. For my money, the best of the lot is “Fireworks,” which captures the fragility of Play‘s quietest moments. For a guy who’s been pretty resolute in his artistry for more than a decade, though, 18 is disappointingly safe. If the next one is called 18 Again, I ain’t buying it.

* * * * *

I was surprised when Mark Eitzel announced that his fifth album would be called Music for Courage and Confidence, because those words seem incongruous with his gorgeously sad catalog. Eitzel has always made lullabyes for the timid and the weary, the sad sacks who seem to live under a black cloud. He has an uncanny knack for bringing out the most depressing interpretation of any lyric and melody, even a romp like “Proclaim Your Joy” on his last album, the terrific The Invisible Man.

The mystery of the title became a lot clearer when I found out that Music for Courage and Confidence would be a covers album. It also seemed a good way to test the above theory, to see if Eitzel’s downhearted treatments of others’ songs would convey the same sense of hopelessness as his original works. Surprise, they do, and they do it beautifully.

Unlike a lot of covers albums, Courage and Confidence benefits from Eitzel’s choice of material. He croons some old standards, like Bill Withers’ inexhaustible “Ain’t No Sunshine,” but also graces some unique choices, like Anne Murray’s “Snowbird,” which opens the album, and Kris Kristofferson’s lovely “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Eitzel somehow turns “I Only Have Eyes for You” into a lonely lament. He strums his world-weary way through Phil Ochs’ anthem to resignation, “Rehearsals for Retirement,” and closes with a terrific rendition of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” The album, no surprise, sticks to low-key arrangements and melancholy moods throughout, but there is one exception: the pulsing take on Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up.”

But perhaps the most surprising, and oddly the most effective, choice here is Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” here transformed into a plaintive plea. Herein lies the genius of Mark Eitzel – he can make even a fluffy pop trifle into a deeply emotional affair. Music for Courage and Confidence is another swell project from Eitzel, the patron saint of sad-eyed depressives everywhere. His gift for heartbreak is so great that he can find it in even the unlikeliest of places.

* * * * *

Next week, that sarcastic genius, Eminem. Betcha can’t wait.

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I have seen Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones twice now, and by the time many of you read this, I’ll likely have sat through it a third.

I’m of two minds about this installment, and I thought I’d let them both speak.

First, 27-year-old me:

Despite some truly horrible dialogue, Attack of the Clones transcends its title and takes its place as a very good installment in the Star Wars saga. The inevitable plot is moved forward a great deal, but not in a dry, exposition-heavy manner, as in Episode I. This film is paced perfectly, and features surprises, discoveries, and a superb concluding sequence that keeps building upon itself until its finale, the coolest lightsaber battle in the series thus far. Those that strayed after Episode I will be very happy with this one, and the perpetually faithful (like myself) will be rewarded with an engaging, eye-popping adventure flick in tune with the spirit of the original trilogy.

And now, eight-year-old me:

YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHH!! OH MY GOD! THAT WAS SOOOOO COOOOOOOL!!! WHEN THE CLONES ATTACKED THE DROIDS, IT WAS AWESOME!!! AND YODA – HOLY GOD, YODA!!! WHAT AN AWESOME MOVIE!!! THIS IS THE BEST STAR WARS EVER!!! THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER!!!

I have been wary of letting my inner eight-year-old out for this flick, lest he have his childlike sense of wonder stamped on by a mediocre Star Wars film. This is not a mediocre Star Wars film, and lately I’ve been less able to keep my giddy excitement in check. George Lucas, beyond all expectation, got it just about right this time. Sure, there are problems, but they’re the same problems that crop up all throughout the original trilogy, most notably in Return of the Jedi, and you don’t hear people griping too much about those. Attack of the Clones (nope, not even warming up to that title a little bit) captures most everything that was stirring and engaging about the latter three episodes, and gives you a lot more to look at and marvel over.

I attended a midnight screening on Thursday morning (technically), and my audience was utterly bowled over by this movie. I lost count of the number of times we broke into applause. If nothing else, I came away elated that other people apparently feel the same tingle at the traditional opening sequence. They applauded when the 20th Century Fox logo morphed into the Lucasfilm logo, they applauded at the appearance of “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away,” and they broke into hoots and hollers when the fanfare kicked in and the opening crawl began. Just that sequence of events is all it takes to send me back to my wide-eyed childhood.

And the movie didn’t disappoint from there. It opens with a bang, and leads shortly thereafter into a high-speed chase through a crowded city skyline, and then we’re off on what’s likely the most exciting ride Lucas has ever offered us. As I mentioned, the pacing for this film is perfect. I don’t know if it was Lucas or his co-writer Jonathan Hale who suggested having Obi-Wan discover the plot in pieces, rather than having it explained up front, but that decision made all the difference. The first half of Clones plays like an episode of Law and Order, with an investigation leading to revelation upon revelation.

There’s also a love story between Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala, and this is, to put it mildly, less successful. The dialogue is wretched, the acting is stiff, and the outcome feels rudely forced. The thing is, the outcome of this relationship is just as inevitable as the rest of the plot, but these sequences feel as though the actors know this, and are just marching in bored lockstep until they get there. Neither Hayden Christensen (quite good in most of the film) nor Natalie Portman (quite good in other films) is helped by the mind-numbingly dumb sentences they have to utter, and it’s obvious that neither of them are convinced by their words. This love story is an important part of the whole saga, and it should have resonated with wonder and tragedy. Even James Cameron did a better job with young lovers in Titanic, and that’s saying something.

But thankfully, you can just ignore those scenes, as they only make up about 15 minutes of the film. Clones is two hours and 20 minutes long, but it moves like lightning, and before you know it, you’re plunged into the final act, the greatest Jedi battle ever staged. Even though you know, because you’ve seen Episodes IV-VI, that Anakin and Obi-Wan get out alive, you’re still caught up in the excitement. Clones, droids, lightsabers, treachery, thrilling chases, and a definitive Jedi moment for Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu all lead up to what might be the coolest thing ever to grace a Star Wars movie.

Ah, Yoda. My screening audience broke into applause three times during Yoda’s brief scene, and even if the rest of the movie had sucked, this would have been worth it. We’ve heard for three movies now what a great Jedi master Yoda is, and I, for one, have wondered how that can be possible – he’s two feet tall, for Christ’s sake. I’m telling you, he goes all Crouching Yoda, Hidden Jedi on us, and damn. That’s all I have to say – damn.

Here’s the best recommendation I can make to those who left the fold after Episode I. When I came out of The Phantom Menace, I probably felt like you did. While the movie was fun, I had the sinking sensation that maybe Lucas had lost it. Maybe the new trilogy wouldn’t link up with the original one as well as it could have, and perhaps Lucas’ filmmaking skills had atrophied beyond repair. Worst of all, I thought that maybe the new trilogy would accomplish nothing more than to sully the original one.

I came out of Clones thinking we’re gonna be just fine. This movie has convinced me that Lucas knows exactly what he’s doing, and has all along. Harry Knowles was right – Clones makes The Phantom Menace a better movie. It’s all coming together now.

So, to sum up my thoughts on the future, here again is 27-year-old me:

All the elements are firmly in place for a rousing and heartbreaking finale in Episode III. Specifically, the final shots of Episode II bring the full reality of the situation home. Clones manages the neat trick of being fun and foreboding at the same time, making you cheer for all the wrong things and drop jaw in astonishment when you realize it. The shadow of the Empire is nearly upon us, and Episode III could be the best of the lot.

And finally, eight-year-old me:

EPISODE III IS GONNA ROCK!!! WOO-HOO!!!!

See you in line Tuesday morning.

I am officially in full geek Star Wars mode.

I’m typing this while watching The Phantom Menace on Fox, and I have my ticket to go see Attack of the Clones in less than a week. I even bought a box of Star Wars – Episode II cereal, which contains marshmallows in shapes that, I guess, are vaguely reminiscent of Yoda, R2-D2 and a Stormtrooper, and also contains absolutely no nutritional value. But I ate it anyway, which is kind of a metaphor for my entire Star Wars experience. Despite all my ramblings about character, motivation, symbolism and whatnot in the movies I enjoy, I am so fucking psyched right now to see this big-budget, swashbuckling eye candy adventure flick.

Review forthcoming next week.

* * * * *

The appeal of Tom Waits is difficult, if not impossible, to explain if you’ve never immersed yourself in his work, but I thought of an illustration that might work.

You know that scene in the movie musicals that happens after the two leads have each had a number of solos, and have done the love duet, and they walk off the frame and the camera slowly pans down to a dirty, disheveled, lovesick drunk who begins to croak a sad, heartbreaking waltz under a grimy streetlight? Well, that guy is Tom Waits. He has a knack for those broken-souled numbers that creep under your skin, and he has a voice that makes your skin creep.

That voice is perhaps the element of Waits’ work that takes the most getting used to. Calling it gravelly would be putting it charitably – Waits sounds like he’s been gargling battery acid for 40 years, and he makes Joe Cocker sound like Sarah McLachlan. But even more than Bob Dylan, who has a similar tone, Waits infuses his sandpaper baritone with palpable emotion, making the listener feel more than you’d think possible. He’s like a Broadway virtuoso from Bizarro World.

A good primer for the odd sensibility of Waits would be his two new albums, Alice and Blood Money, out this week. One is a lovely, orchestrated affair, the other a bitter, dark and jazzy missive from the seedy side of town. Together they offer a nice overview of the different styles Waits has been proffering for 30 years or so.

Alice opens with the title track, which tells you all you need to know about Alice and her effect on Waits’ character. (I should, of course, mention that Waits albums are often little plays, and that’s especially true here, because both albums were composed to accompany stage shows.) Over a slow, shimmering jazz background, Waits asks, “How does the ocean rock the boat? How did the razor find my throat?” At the song’s conclusion, he sinks into blissful futility: “But I must be insane, to go skating on your name, and by tracing it twice, I fell through the ice…”

The album continues in a heartsick vein, Waits’ glowering voice contrasted with glorious string arrangements and gentle harmony. “Flower’s Grave” twists cliches on their ears: “As one rose dies, another blooms, it’s always been that way…but no one puts flowers on a flower’s grave.” “Watch Her Disappear” begins with the line, “Last night I dreamed that I was dreaming of you…,” and it weaves a hallucinogenic tale of desperation. “Poor Edward” introduces us to a man who kills himself to escape the voice of the other face on the back of his head (really), and “Table Top Joe” spins a yarn about a torso-less piano player (again, really).

Lest you start thinking that Alice is loopy and strange, it’s actually quite traditionally beautiful. Unlikely as it may seem, Waits’ voice delivers on the beauty of the songs by dredging up their inner pain. The album is a slice of off-kilter, soul-stirring melancholy, and the odder it is, the more touching it becomes. Alice is sorrow-drowning music set to moonlit walks along grimy streets.

Should you take a detour down one of the alleys on those grimy streets, you might end up in the part of town described on Blood Money, which by its nature is a less enjoyable album, but a more fascinating one. The titles tell the tale: “Misery is the River of the World,” “Everything Goes to Hell,” “God’s Away on Business,” “The Part You Throw Away,” and on and on. Blood Money is harsh, jagged and raw.

It’s also one of Waits’ most jazz-oriented recordings, and it finds him in full growl mode more often than not. He sounds here like a deranged carnival barker, welcoming you to the freak show outside your window. “All the good in the world you can put inside a thimble, and still have room for you and me,” he spits on “Misery is the River of the World,” over a propulsive bass and clarinet backing. Later he opines, “If there’s one thing you can say about mankind, it’s that there’s nothing kind about man,” which sort of sums up the 12 tales of venom and vice that follow.

And as such, it’s a less affecting work than Alice. Where that album couched its misery in equal amounts of sweetness, Blood Money goes for the jugular, and after a while the gloomy jazz stylings start to blend together. There are some standouts here, especially “Lullaby” and infidelity tale “Another Man’s Vine,” but overall Blood Money takes a few more listens to sort out in your mind. Both of these albums are worth the time they take, however, because you’ll never find another singer-songwriter as idiosyncratic, yet emotionally resonant, as Tom Waits.

Next week, probably Moby, though the single hasn’t grown on me. It’s got a cool video, though…

Oh, and Star Wars. Whoo-hoo!

See you in line Tuesday morning.