The Who - Endless Wire: I could go on and on about this, but I’m just going to save that for a formal review to be coming shortly. In the meantime, just know two things: I’m fully aware this isn’t remotely overlooked (and I don’t care - I love the Who) and Best Buy has your best deal: $9.99 gets you the album, the 5-song live DVD and an exclusive 7-song live CD (two songs overlap the DVD’s content, both of which are sourced from the same concert in Lyon, France.)

Isis - In The Absence Of Truth: I like to think of Isis as the band that Tool wishes it could be. Call me jaded, but Tool has become entangled in plots created to baffle and obfuscate rather than intrigue and draw listeners in, being what they think is clever but what really winds up being just tiring and boring after a few listens. Isis instead has wisely held back the throttle at all times, always letting things churn just a little longer than might be comfortable, but giving listeners something extra to chew on, and that’s what’s made their music so rewarding - it’s worth going back to over and over again. It’s not easy listening, but it’s also just not made difficult to keep you guessing forever. There’s no game here as there always seems to be with Tool lately - the music speaks enough for itself that the band doesn’t need to hide clues to keep listeners interested and that speaks volumes as to who their music is aimed at. We’re all adults here, they’re saying, do we really need to give you riddles? How about we just give you great music that will last you a lifetime?

Isis is heavier, harder, and more demanding - this is not casual music by any means. While vocalist Aaron Turner has usually spent most of his time in a yell, here he has added more sung vocals. Don’t take that as a sign that the band is softening. It’s simply a new dynamic that adds texture. In The Absence Of Truth shows the band growing by leaps and bounds and easily becomes a contender for metal album of the year.

Willie Nelson - Songbird: “It’s a good thing I had a bag of marijuana instead of a bag of spinach or I’d be dead by now,” Nelson said after being arrested recently for possession. And it’s a good thing he was arrested now rather than before the sessions for this album or it might not have happened. Here Nelson put himself in the hands of alt-country hero Ryan Adams, who backed Willie with his own Cardinals backing band for this outing, and the results sound to be very, very promising. I look to be putting this up there with Teatro as a favorite.

Joe Satriani - Satriani Live! CD and DVD: Good ol’ Satch, always putting something out. He’s been consistently releasing new albums of material every two years or so for nearly twenty years, believe it or not, so why am I a little confused by this release? Because this live set comes a mere 6 months after the release of his previous studio album. I don’t know about any other Satriani fans, but I’m just not hungry enough yet - I haven’t really fully devoured Super Colossal yet. While that was certainaly not a bad album, it’s certainly nothing new and hasn’t demanded a lot of my attention. It may seem petty to complain about releases so close together, but, really, at least a year between releases is a good schedule to keep. But, as I’ve noted quite a few times in recent weeks, it is the Christmas season . . . what better time to put this stuff out?

Def Leppard - Hysteria (Deluxe Edition): My history with Def Leppard may have started with Pyromania, one of the greatest hard rock albums ever, but Hysteria holds a very special place in my heart. Like a couple of my other favorite albums of all time (Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime and Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son,) it came along at just the right time - late summer of 1987, mid-teenage years, when I picked it up based solely out of a love for Pyromania. And there would begin a nearly two year stint of daily listening to this album, the kind of listening that seemed to only happen at that time in my life - after that, life got much busier and it became much more difficult to fit in a one hour listening session every day. But for a couple of years there, I somehow managed to complete the ritual nearly every day, at least more than several times a week - something I can’t say ever happens nowadays even with my most prized CDs. But I do still spin Hysteria and often find a brief glint of the same pull the album had for me 19 years ago.

This deluxe edition packs the original 12-song album in remastered format with four studio b-sides on disc 1 while disc 2 culls the live b-sides from the era together in one place with a number of remixes, rounded out by the hilarious-one-time “Release Me” sung by, I believe, their manager. I had all of these b-sides on7″ vinyl - and still do - that came in sleeves that would recreate the album cover in giant form. Of course, the band ended up only releaseing 7 singles off Hysteria (”only” 7 - ha!) so the remaining two spaces in the 9-piece puzzle will apparently remain forever empty. Regardless, I’m just thrilled to have everything in one place finally - when I tracked down all the 7″ers, I hastily made a tape copy of the b-sides and never played them again. That tape saw a lot of action - the b-sides from this era (besides the joke “Release Me,” of course, and those unnecessary remixes) were spectacular left-overs. Some would end up on the rarities release RetroActive, but not in the form I originally heard them. So here is where I’ll finally get to hear them again for the first time in about 15 years. I’m excited, to say the least.

Elvis Costello - Live: A Case For Song (DVD): Another one for the Christmas list - a rerelease of a video from the 90s featuring Costello performing against a trio of ensembles - the Attractions, the Brodski Quartet, and the White City Septet.

The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics (Limited Edition CD/DVD): We knew this had to be coming, didn’t we? What with Yoshimi receiving the CD/DVD treatment and then The Soft Bulletin getting it earlier this year, it was inevitable that Mystics was also going to be appended by a DVD with surround sound and bonus tracks. It’s just a shame that the album couldn’t be better - it’s one of my bigger disappointments this year. However, the DVD on this one is so jam-packed with extras that I’m going to go ahead and take the dive on it in hopes that the non-album tracks redeem it - because “You Got To Hold On,” from The W.A.N.D. single was as good as or better than much of what made it to the album (”Hold On” is also on the DVD.)

Aimee Mann - One More Drifter In The Snow: A Christmas album from the Diva of Depressing? Actually, that sounds great! It just seems so out of character. If I have to buy a Christmas album, this is going to be the one. And probably the only one.

Jeff Tweedy - Sunken Treasure: Live in the Pacific Northwest (DVD): Wilco frontman Tweedy took his solo act to venues on the west coast and recorded the results for this DVD. As usual with the Wilco folks, they’re making this a “value-added” effort - buyers of the DVD will gain access to mp3s of the songs performed on the DVD. Now that’s the kind of fan-friendly service that ALL bands should be paying attention to. I didn’t have this DVD at the top of my must-buy list simply because I don’t have a lot of time to sit down and watch anything at the moment, but when I read this I decided I wanted to vote with my wallet. There’s only one way to show your support for selfless acts of kindness on the parts of artists and labels like this and that’s to buy.

Marc Woodworth - 33 1/3rd Book Series: Guided By Voices’ Bee Thousand (Book): The title says it all - a book on the creation of Guided By Voices’ lo-fi classic. It just sounds interesting as hell, and Bob Pollard gave the book his approval so there’s that.

The week in hard to find things, apparently - one set of easy to find US releases and a couple of albums that aren’t technically out in the US make it difficult for us music lovers to get our hands on these things. I really don’t get why, in this day, the labels do things like making releases available only in certain markets.

I remember years ago stumbling upon import releases that I’d only read about in magazines. Before the internet, my only hope of finding this stuff was that my local indie store or, maybe, Tower Records would manage to get in one copy at an extra-exorbitant price. And I’d grab ‘em whenever I saw these things because it was unlikely that a US release would happen anytime soon, if ever. Of course, the internet made those experiences redundant - Amazon stocks almost everything, and if they don’t, the artist’s own website will surely direct you to their own shop where you can get what you can’t easily find. Not to mention good old downloading, for those of us without a conscience.

But here’s the thing: people do still want to buy CDs and own them. And they want to be able to find and buy them easily - at good prices. I, and I’m sure many others, really figured that the internet would permanently put to rest the days of imports because, frankly, it was a stupid notion. One release for all the world makes a lot more sense than multiple versions all over the place and at different times. But here I am telling you in 2006 that exactly that is going on - more music is being released like it’s 1992 again and there’s no telling that these albums are going to see release in the US. Only today people have that other option that the labels hate. They only encourage it with behavior like this. People are going to find a way to get the music they want, and if you make it even slightly difficult for them, they’re going to take the path of least resistance. That said, maybe with at least one of these I can steer a few sales back toward the band . . .

The Tragically Hip - World Container: If you ask me, the Hip’s management, label, someone in charge made a major mistake with this album. They’ve allowed it to be released everyone but the US this week while the US release date hangs in limbo - there is absolutely no information to be found about when or even if this great Canadian quartet’s latest album will be released in the states. In the meantime, US fans will do exactly as I did - purchase the album through Canadian means, such as the officially sanctioned Maple Music. Very frustrating indeed.

And the music? I don’t know much there, either - another big mistake: absolutely no promotion whatsoever, because I only found out about this today, release day, and I generally keep up on this stuff, being one of my favorite bands. All I know is that the man who is popularly known as “the one who ruined Metallica,” Bob Rock, produced it. Let’s hope the results here are only positive.

Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go (Deluxe Edition): After guitarist Richie Edwards disappeared following the release of their fantastic Holy Bible, it looked pretty grim for the Manics. But the managed to pull it together again for another album, and this is the result. It’s nowhere near as manic nor as interesting, but it is an intriguing and, in spots, really beautiful piece of work. This three-disc deluxe package is a wonderful way to celebrate it - lots of bonus tracks on the two audio discs and a DVD with videos, live tracks, and a documentary.

That said . . . I realize the Manics are a pretty obscure group in the US, but their previous album, Holy Bible, got a similar “deluxe” treatment and US release, so why is it that this one is not being released in the US? Were the DVD in NTSC format, which all PAL players can use, there would be no issue, but it’s a PAL format disc, making this an expensive investment with 1/3 less payoff for US buyers.

Primus - They All Can’t Be Zingers (best-of) Blame It On The Fish (DVD): Look at that, something you actually can buy here in the US! Primus releases a long-awaited best-of in the form of this 16-track, career-spanning disc. Not much to be said - it hits all the right spots for those who don’t want to commit to an entire discography. Best Buy, of course, has the usual bonus this week - an extra disc with 4 live tracks and a super-low price of $7.99.

Blame It On The Fish is a live DVD culled from the 2003 reunion tour.

Not having access to my own computer this week is seriously throwing me off. My computer, see, lays in pieces as I await the arrival of new components to update it and bring it up to speed with today’s specs - what I was working on was painfully out of date (ahem - by about 6 years) and struggled with just about every task I put to it. What started out as a weekend project quickly grew out of hand when I realized that everything about my old computer, case and power supply included, was so out of date that I was simply better off replacing just about all of it. I’d hoped to get by with “just” the motherboard, processor, RAM, and of course a fresh install of Windows, but I quickly realized that I could take advantage of the faster processes with a better hard drive, and then the power supply needed upgrading, and then the case didn’t have space for my three hard drives, and I needed more fans to cool all this hot-running equipment off . . . I went into this project much less prepared than I should have been.

And so my I remembered why I will always feel safe having my CDs handy, even while I tote my ever-present electronic friend, the Ipod, along everywhere I go - because I never know when something is going to prevent me from putting stuff on my Ipod. This week, at least, I’m carrying around a stack of CDs that aren’t on my Ipod and won’t be until the computer’s back up and running Itunes again. I’ll likely be adding a couple of these to the pile in the next couple days:

Neko Case - Live from Austin, Texas (DVD): Another great release from PBS’ fantastic Austin City Limits series. Why has it taken them so long to finally start releasing these shows on CD and DVD? (In this case it appears to only be on DVD, however.) This 2003 concert might be where I first experienced Case’s enchanting voice and music - I remember being so enthralled by what I heard that I immediately went out the next day and picked up Blacklisted and The Tigers Have Spoken. You can guess that this comes highly recommended. The DVD includes material not aired on TV.

Isis & Aerogramme - In The Fishtank: These “Fishtank” performances are always intriguing - pair two bands together for two days and see what happens. Usually they’re quite different in style, but in this case, Isis and Aereogramme aren’t all that different. Both are metal bands, but Isis is big, unrelenting wall of terrific noise where Aereogramme is more dramatic with greater dynamics (think a harder, weirder A Perferct Circle.) The result here is pretty interesting - things go further in both directions, but Isis’ influence stands out the most, being the most intense of the two.

Damien Jurado - And Now That I’m In Your Shadow: Jurado and his cracked, wavering voice has won me over. He’s not a perfect singer - he’s not even great in the way that enigmatic leads can be imperfect and yet still make it work. There’s something so earnest and vulnerable that sometimes I feel almost as if I shouldn’t listen, because it feels too private, but its because it’s so earnest and because there’s a genuine sound of desire in his voice to have people really listen to what he has to say. And so I can’t not listen. Jurado wasn’t an easy artist for me to get into because of this, but it’s been really rewarding - like slowly building up trust in a friendship. He may have put it all out there, but it’s only with time that I felt comfortable really listening closely to what he had to say. I can only imagine this new album will be more of the same.

Robert Pollard - Normal Happiness with Moon: Believe it or not, this is Pollard’s SIXTH (and technically seventh) release this year. First it was From A Compound Eye, then he released, in May, The Takeovers’ Turn To Red, the Keene Brothers’ Blues And Boogie Shoes, and Psycho And The Birds’ All That Is Holy - and his Psycho pseudonym put out an EP just a couple months after that, Check Your Zoo. There are even rumors of another album being readied. But we’re not talking about those - we’re talking about Normal Happiness here. I’ve stayed away from all leaks and previews so I can hear it fresh, so I can only tell you what I’ve read - that it’s a return to his Guided By Voices 2-minute pop song genius.

UPDATE: To find the indie store in your area carrying Moon, you’ll need to look for a store listed with the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. Here in Arizona that amounts to ONE store - Hoodlums, buried deep in the bowels of ASU’s Memorial Union, which is unfortunately an extremely inconvenient location for most people - on campus, open only during the week from 9am-6pm. But what are you going to do?

And if you buy from an indie store and you ask real nice, you should get a copy of Moon, a live album recorded this summer while Pollard and his Ascended Masters opened for Pearl Jam. This alone should make the purchase a must. Very limited - get at least one copy NOW.

Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere (DVD): Why it’s taken Porcupine Tree so long to release a live DVD, I don’t know, but I’m glad to finally see one. Disc one is the show culled from two performances in Chicago on the Deadwing tour, disc two has a number of odds and ends (a couple videos from the Rockpalast performance which is available as an audio download from their store, movies that backed the band live, and a few other things.)

Well, a day late, but you know the old cliché. A day off managed to be too busy to get my new-release thing done - imagine that. That’s always the way it goes, isn’t it? There was something in the news not too long ago about how weekends and free time are so cluttered with projects and work that people don’t rest and often find working weekdays more restful than their weekends. There’s something wrong with that - and yet I can’t say I’m immune from feeling that way, either. And yet, do we actually accomplish much more than we did when we spent time resting? I don’t think I do.

Trey Anastasio - Bar 17: Poor Trey - not only did he get wrapped up in dealing with a major label last year with Shine, he also had to deal with the double-whammy of two decidedly non-fan friendly formats that Columbia insisted on releasing the album through - the shoddy DualDisc format and the now notorious virus-laden copy-protected discs put out by head company Sony. The album suffered on all fronts - the music sounds like it had been relentlessly tampered with until it no longer sounded natural and free, like Phish’s music did - the very aspect his fans enjoyed about their music and wanted to hear him continue to produce in his own music. Well, a year later, Anastasio has fled Columbia for his own label, Sony has been sued numerous times for its copy-protection, and DualDisc is on its death-bed, and we’re all better for it. Trey has put together exactly the kind of album in Bar 17 that fans were expecting with Shine - exuberant and light-hearted, yet serious in the right places. It’s everything that Shine struggled to be. (Psst! If you act quick, you can still snag a copy from Trey’s site with the free 9-song bonus disc.)

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife: I really wondered what the move to a major label, Capitol in this case, from an indie, would do to the Decemberists. Would they turn in something less than stellar, as happened with Death Cab For Cutie on their major label debut, Plans? Or would they stick to their guns and thrive with a bigger budget and more room to experiment in an environment that typically doesn’t allow much wiggle room for that? Happily, it appears the latter is what happened - perhaps Picaresque being a letdown to me (and I know I was one of the few) should have been a sign that this band needed bigger hoops to jump through. Well, they must have found them because The Crane Wife is, simply put, astounding and, in fact, it is a very surprising album to be found as a major label debut - they took a lot of chances. Here we find them exercising the expansive traits first found on the Tain EP, which sadly disappeared with Picaresque - with The Crane Wife we find multi-part songs and two lengthy (we’re talking 12 minutes here) epics. There are even prog-rock inspired keyboard solos (gasp! horror!) in the three part “The Island.” Also be prepared for the Decemberists homage to Talking Heads in the form of “The Perfect Crime #2″ - because the music sure sounds a hell of a lot like “New Feeling.” And somehow, despite the horrible cacophony you might imagine in your head, it works.

Most of all, the songwriting has tightened up considerably - where on previous albums I felt like there were times when Colin Meloy employed his seemingly vast knowledge of quaint terms like parapets and pantaloons to cover up an essential lack of dramatic narrative, Meloy has real, effective storylines to play out here. What’s more, while there may be some conceptual narrative tying elements together, the album works like the best concept albums do - as a collection of great songs, rather than a concept held together by trickery and coy re-use of thematic music. It’s too early to say exactly what the concept is, but it isn’t too early to say that this is a bunch of really great songs.

Pernice Brothers - Live A Little: Maybe they tried a little too hard on their previous album, Discover A Lovelier You. I got the sense, at least, that there was a lot of trying and very little effortlessness to that album to achieve the loose, jangly, hazy feeling of 70s pop that pervades the Pernice aesthetic. You can’t pull that kind of sound off - you know the sound I’m talking about, I think - I’m talking about the kind of thing that guys like Sam Prekop and his buddy Archer Prewitt do so well outside of The Sea And Cake (because they’re a little too retro/jazz/pop for comparison.) But here, they make it work and get that kind of breezy gentleness that really makes listening to Live A Little a joy. It’s not a groundbreaking album by any means, but it’s a very pleasant listen and fans of airy pop with great, simple, hooky guitar should give this one a chance. It’s by far the Brothers’ most accomplished work yet.

Another week, another surprising amount of intriging stuff . . .

Nels Cline - New Monastery: Some may only know guitarist Cline as the newest addition to the Wilco lineup, but fans of skronky jazz guitar will undoubtedly know him as one of the leaders of the avant garde and improv scenes. Here, Cline reportedly plays slightly more restrained in tribute to one of his favorite artists and composers, Andrew Hill, from whose repertoire all the music is drawn. From the bits I have heard, if one was looking for a way into Cline’s sometimes difficult work, this might be the most welcoming avenue.

Depeche Mode - Touring The Angel (CD and DVD): As I’ve pointed out in the past couple of weeks, Christmas is approaching and the labels are going to be preparing things that are perfect for gift-giving. Here is one such item - Depeche Mode caught on tour for last year’s fantastic return to form, Playing the Angel. Includes a short 8-track CD of audio (come on, why not a full CD?) from the full-length DVD as well as another DVD of additional material.

Isis - Clearing The Eye (DVD): There’s not a whole lot of information out there on what this is, but what I gather is that it’s a pretty simple gathering of live footage - several different cuts and one full show from Sydney, Australia, and then a video for “In Fiction.” I don’t picture Isis being a particularly exciting band to watch live - their music is very intense, but slow, dark, and it requires a particular mood for me to really get into. I’d complain about them not releasing live CDs, but they actually do that - in extremely limited numbers through their website and at their shows. How limited are they? Ask me how many of the 4 that they’ve released so far that I own. ZERO - and I keep tabs on this stuff. So I’ll get the DVD and rip the audio to listen to instead. It’s not as elegant, but it works in the end.

Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood - Out Louder: Maybe I was the only one, but I found guitarist John Scofield’s 1997 album with Medeski, Martin, & Wood, A Go Go, to be extremely disappointing. It seemed to compromise at every turn - it wasn’t either “Scofieldy” enough to work as his album nor was it “MMWy” enough to work as their album. It just felt flat, felt too much like the group didn’t know who was supposed to be the primary leader (Scofield or MMW) and it resulted in boring me on all fronts.

I found myself very skeptical, then, when I saw that Out Louder would pair the band again with Scofield - but I also noted that Scofield was included in the band name, rather than them being simply his backing band. And while they were only 30 second clips, Amazon’s wise decision to put them up a week early led me to conclude that the “new” name meant that a more balanced and nuanced set of music would emerge. Consider me curious enough to give them a second shot.

Sparklehorse - Dreamt For Lightyears In The Belly Of A Mountain: There’s something about Sparklehorse’s music that evokes images of being lost, but not the panic-stricken moments when you don’t know where you are. I mean the moment when you simply have to stop worrying about where you are, or, more accurately, where you are not. It’s in those moments where a kind of calm sweeps over you, when you simply give up and give in, even if only temporarily, to being lost. That Mark Linkous seems to shun society and live off in the woods where he creates his music only adds to my belief that he intends his music to invoke exactly these sentiments, and he does it well.

Paul Westerberg - Open Season (Original Soundtrack): There’s something really worrisome when you hear that any highly regarded artist is doing the soundtrack for a kid’s movie. It conjures images of Sting and Phil Collins destroying their careers and what little credibility they had left. But, you know, Paul Westerberg. I mean, come on. The Replacements? How could he ever sink to those levels? Surely a soundtrack crafted by him couldn’t possibly be that bad, not Sting-bad or Phil Collins-bad, right? But seeing a title like “The Right To Arm Bears” doesn’t help much. However, Alissa, the Replacements/Westerberg fan, reports that it’s actually not bad and doesn’t stray too far from Westerberg’s typical solo sound, so there you go. And fellow ex-Replacement Tommy Stinson pairs up with Paul on a couple of tracks. Also features Pete Yorn on vocals on one Westerberg track as well as two Deathray songs and one Talking Heads song.

Dave Douglas - Meaning and Mystery: What was once only available online is apparently now being released to brick-and-mortar stores, although I can’t imagine it’ll be too widely available outside of some specialty shops. As this is more of a “sequel,” for lack of a better word, to Strange Liberation, minus Bill Frisell on guitar and with Donny McCaslin replacing Chris Potter on sax, this isn’t a direct follow-up to last year’s amazing Keystone set and it doesn’t quite live up to the precedent set by that great album, but Douglas has been on a roll lately and it’s hard to say he really misses the mark. How is it in comparison to Strange Liberation? I’m an admitted Frisell die-hard, but I have to say that SL is not one of my favorites - and I think Meaning and Mystery is the better of the two.

Also newly available through Douglas’ Musicstem site is a new live set from Sweden that covers his Keystone material. If it’s anything like the Bimhuis set, it’ll be a must-have. Why not buy it from Douglas’ site and give the guy some extra money? (If you’re concerned about shipping, they’re fast!)

The Devil And Daniel Johnston (DVD): Some people are simply driven to their art, and some even through madness produce fascinating works of beauty. Such is the case with singer/songwriter (and artist) Daniel Johnston, who battles numerous psychological problems, not the least of which are devastating manic-depression and schizophrenia, to produce endearingly odd songs about lost love and struggles between good and evil. He’s an aquired taste, to be sure - Johnston sings with a lisping lilt that often defies rhythmic structure, but for those that can listen through his quirks, it’s clear that he’s singing from the heart.

This film follows Johnston in his hometown as he lives with his parents and creates his music and art, utilizing a lifetime’s worth of audio and film that Johnston and family and friends were lucky enough to capture. The documentary took the Best Director and Best Documentary (Audience Award) at Sundance and the San Francisco Independent Film Festival, respectively.

Andy Partridge - Fuzzy Warbles 7 & 8 and Collector’s Album pre-Order: XTC mainman Andy Partridge has been releasing pairs CDs of XTC demos for about three years now and is set to conclude the project with numbers 7 and 8, capping it off with a special box built to hold all 8 discs along with a book of essays by the man and an additional, shorter disc of leftover tracks. For big XTC fans these are a must-have - among the alternate versions, there are to be found a number of tracks that never made it to official albums, many of which you’ll be scratching your head as to why they didn’t. Overall, for the fan, they make a hell of a fun listening experience - these demos are, for the most part, a significant cut above most demos - neither too low quality to enjoy nor too similar to their official album brethren. And now’s the time to act - the previous discs have been knocked down to significantly cheap prices to make buying the whole set feasible. And if you’ve already bought any combination of the previous 6, have no fear as they’ve got you covered - you can buy any combination to fill your needs. There’s only one place to buy this set this way, however, and that’s at Andy’s official site - preorders for this set begin this week: http://www.ape.uk.net/acatalog/compact_discs.html

Red Sparowes - Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Sun: The second album from this instrumental metal quintet is a conceptual piece aiming at telling the the story of China’s great sparrow campaign, part of the Great Leap Forward. In the 50s, Mao Zedong initiated a pest-killing program that he believed would lead to much more productive harvests. Field workers would bang pots and pans to keep sparrows flying until they died. You can probably imagine the outcome - sure, it worked for one year, but then, with all the sparrows dead, locusts swarmed unabated and caused a great famine.

Anyway, high-concept or not, the music is instrumental so it doesn’t really matter, does it? Red Sparowes are a heady mix of the paranoid blast of Neurosis, Pelican, and Isis, minimalist repetitive pattern obsessions of Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, and even touches of 80s goth guitar hero Robert Smith of the Cure here and there - and manages to shoehorn in a complete metal oddity, pedal steel guitar. Their previous album, At the Soundless Dawn, has grown to be a favorite of mine over the past year - I sure hope this one will follow suit.

Man, what a week of releases this week is turning out to be. Apparently if you’re a music freak, Christmas is coming about two and a half months early, because Santa apparently is making an early delivery today. Why so much stuff is crammed into the release schedule on this one day, I can’t imagine. I’d better get started on this or it’s going to take me all night to get this typed up . . .

The Black Keys - Magic Potion: Every genre seems to get reinvented every so often. Jazz had its renewal a few years back, and now the blues seems to be burbling under again, what with the White Stripes having been so successful the past few years. But the White Stripes got nuthin’ on this (also) duo of guitar and drums. The Black Keys reach back into the blues’ swampy past to pull at the greasy, grimy roots and get something good and gritty. This is the kind of stuff you always hear modern guitarists talking about listening to, but you never hear a whole lot of proof in their own music that they actually listened to anything beyond some old Zeppelin records. The Black Keys actually deliver.

Ornette Coleman - Sound Grammar: I really can’t tell you much about this - I’m just intrigued to see something new from free-jazz pioneer Ornette. All I know is that the material on this was taken from recent live dates with his son on drums, Denardo, and bassists Greg Cohen and Tony Falaga. Your guess is as good as mine as to the rest.

Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian: I have been a big proponent of jazz guitarist Bill Frisell’s explorations into Americana for quite a long time now, but I have to admit that I’m really excited to see this trio set getting him back to hard-core jazz again. There just comes a time when maybe it’s best to get back to where it all began, and it seems that right now might that time.

Following on the heels of the very successful (music-wise) East/West live album, which found Frisell straying back into jazzier territory with his Americana-based material, this album pairs him with his long-time associate, drummer Paul Motian, with whom he’s recorded a number of albums, but never together with bassist Ron Carter. Hopefully this won’t be a one-off.

Branford Marsalis Quartet - Braggtown: Could it be that the labels waited until fall to release their jazz albums? I’ve been asking myself many times lately if I’ve simply fallen out of love with jazz, or has it been a terrible year for the genre? Maybe it’s simply been a terribly slow year, as it appears that this week begins an introduction of a number of jazz releases throughout the fall.

I find Marsalis hit and miss, but I’m always intrigued to hear what he’s up to.

The Mars Volta - Amputechture: After Frances the Mute, I honestly wasn’t sure if I particularly cared where the Mars Volta was going next. I found the album completely misguided - or maybe unguided is a more fitting word - and a sonic mess, as if the band simply threw together every chord progression and half-song idea they could muster, then stretched everything out for as long as possible with ambient drones when they ran out of ideas. I have to give them credit, however - they sure tried everything they seemed to have in their collective suggestion box.

This time around, however, they’ve tightened things up a bit. Oh, don’t worry, things are still ridiculously overblown - that’s part of their appeal - but at least there seems to be some sense of direction going on in this one. I don’t need prog-rock to necessarily make sense - but I do need it to sound like it made some kind of sense to the band themselves. And on that front, Amputechture seems to mean something to them, and it’s far, far stronger than Frances the Mute for it.

Mastodon - Blood Mountain: Would it be overkill to just go ahead and say “metal album of the year”? Maybe, but maybe not. Somehow, they’ve done it again - turned out yet another amazing, mind-bending, just plain weird album of metal virtually unlike anything else out there now or ever before. What’s more, it doesn’t really sound like Remission or Leviathan - and neither of those two sounded much like each other, either - yet it is decidedly and unmistakeably Mastodon. Few bands’ names are as particularly suited to their sound as Mastodon - they’re that heavy.

Pat Metheny and Brad Mehldau - Metheny/Mehldau: This is one of those pairings that could either be a match made in heaven or be a regrettable, embarassing mess. Luckily, from the little I’ve gotten to hear of this match of jazz guitarist Metheny and pianist Mehldau, it’s the former, and it pulls equally from each’s strong points.

REM - And I Feel Fine: The Best Of The IRS Years 1982-1987 (Collector’s Edition): REM’s early and best material is finally getting the remaster treatment it has long deserved. Of course, we won’t see the remastered albums for a while, as Capitol isn’t dumb enough to give up on holiday and nostalgia sales of a best-of and then double up on the income by unleashing deluxe editions of the original albums with lavish packaging and lots of extra tracks. And, of course, fans can’t be without this, either, because the label was wise enough to compile a version with an extra 21 tracks worth of outtakes and rarities that should sate their appetite for new stuff, should the remastered tracks not be enough to part money from their wallets. And, really, for only a few dollars more, it’s just not worth buying the stand-alone best-of and pass up this “Collector’s Edition.” I’ll bet that none of these tracks find their way onto the remastered albums next year, either, making this a must-have.

TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain: Guaranteed to be a very, very strong contender for album of the year on many lists - you read it here. TV On The Radio has grown immensely from their first, very impressive debut album, and I (and others) think this may be the time for them to really turn heads. I’ll be disappointed if they don’t.

An unconventional combination of the sound of early solo Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, and touches of David Bowie with hip-hop and minimalist post-rock sensibilities of today, TV On The Radio doesn’t really sound like rock per se, yet doesn’t sound so esoteric that their music is a turn-off. Instead, the stew of sound they concoct is mesmerizing. It’s just so different that you can’t help but be fascinated. There aren’t many things going on in rock that I can point to and say with confidence that people will look back on in 20 years and still look at as an important musical statement - the days of those moments happening with any frequency are long over - but this is one of them.

Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass: While TV On The Radio might be the best album of the year, this has to be the best album title of the year.

Yo La Tengo “took it down a notch” on their last couple of albums, and while I can appreciate their quieter side, my favorite album of theirs is I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One because it mixed their renowned tendency to go jazzy and explore with plenty of moments where they just cut loose and wailed on their instruments - and the last couple were notable for very little of that. The reviews I’ve been reading suggest that, 9 years later, they’ve finally found those distortion pedals again and have given us another album like I Can Hear, so I’m pretty excited to see what this album has to offer.

And that’s not all - I’ve left a lot out that I know others might be interested in:

Justin Timberlake
John Mayer
Barenaked Ladies
Everclear
Bob Seger
Los Lobos
Mouse On Mars

I simply can’t cover it all, nor do I even want to (some I obviously don’t care about.) Gotta draw the line somewhere. Like I said, Christmas is a-coming, but why everything had to be dumped onto today, I can’t imagine.

Iron Maiden - A Matter Of Life And Death: There’s no simple way to put it - Iron Maiden is a huge part of my musical life. I found them - they found me, maybe - in that sweet spot in every heavy metal fan’s life, that period of waffling confusion that hovers around your 16th birthday. You can’t really go anywhere, you can’t really do anything - you’re just there, waiting for something of consequence to happen.

Late summer, 1988: I had just gotten my permit for my driver’s license - not much else was going on in my life, but I was discovering metal . . . and that’s all I really needed to keep me busy. I’d already found one significant landmark album - Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime - and I apparently needed another one.

When you’re a dorky fifteen year old with no interest in sports of any kind, about the only kind of group interaction I had was riding my bike to the mall with a couple of friends, where we’d struggle to find something to do. Eventually, we’d make our way across the street to a smaller strip mall where a Wherehouse records was buried between a Circle K and some hair salon. This was my music world at the time - not long before I found the somewhat limited world of indie music stores I had access to, but back in the days when a place like Wherehouse could actually be counted on to have a fairly decent selection of music. Those days seem a much longer time ago given the sad state that large corporate-chain music stores fell into early in the 90s.

Cruising the stacked rows of cassettes in the Wherehouse, you’d find them arranged like tiny books in a weird, shiny, plastic library. There was always the occasional cassette case turned face-forward, displaying its artwork, usually with a sale tag displayed below. Running my fingers across the alphabet of artists - and I still do this to this day - I would peruse what was still there and what was new. That particular day, something stood out - that blue cover, with the sea rippling below that decrepit half-torso’d character holding what seemed to be a baby in a womb, complete with umbilical cord that somehow had fingers attaching itself to the larger character’s exposed ribs. What IS this?! Iron Maiden?! I knew the name, of course - how could I not? They were evil, everyone knew that. You know, “666, the number of the beast!” Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. That just reeked of evil, and I had to check it out.

I grabbed the cassette off the rack and immediately flipped it over. Ooh, cool, I thought - it was one of those cassettes with the wrap-around cards so the artwork covered the entire back. That meant, to me, anyway, the band was a class-act. And it was a clear cassette! Another plus! No one really wanted those lame off-white cassettes in the cheap-feeling black cassette cases - what you really looked for were the cool clear cassettes with the white printing. Oh, sure, they got beat up pretty quickly, but for a short while, that crystal-clear plastic was the thing you obsessed over. CDs have their clarity and relative sturdiness and vinyl has its warmth and vast artwork, but cassettes had the cool factor of a miniature, bonafide gadget going for them. While there’s much I won’t ever miss about cassettes, I will say this: shake a CD or a record and tell me if you hear little plastic parts clinking and rattling, or try stuffing one into a pocket to take along on a car ride.

Amongst the ice and the water of the artwork, the titles immediately grabbed my attention - “The Clairvoyant,” “Infinite Dreams,” “The Evil That Men Do,” all these things intrigued me. In the back of my mind, I was giving them the benefit of the doubt, as I always try to do - “they really aren’t evil, right? They’re not devil worshipper, right?” But being a teenager in high school, I’d heard all the rumors, that people around school who were into things Satanic were into Maiden and other bands like them. It didn’t help convince me otherwise that there was a book that looked suspiciously like a Bible buried under ice in the corner. Regardless, I kept the tape gripped in hand until I got to the counter, where I nervously made my purchase and sped home to find out what I’d gotten myself into.

Needless to say, I got myself in pretty deep - 18 years later, I’m still into them. I even tried a couple of times in my twenties to convince myself that I had outgrown Iron Maiden. I found out the hard way that just isn’t going to happen - Iron Maiden is a part of me, and I am a part of what’s kept Iron Maiden around, several times it seems as I’ve bought remasters and special editions and boxsets and DVDs, and now A Matter Of Life And Death, the band’s 14th studio album (10th with Bruce Dickinson on vocals.) It’s not likely to topple any of the band’s finest moments from any fan’s mind, but as long as it follows in the footsteps of 2000’s Brave New World and 2003’s Dance Of Death, it’ll be another fine release they, and we as fans, can be proud of and listen to and actually enjoy frequently - something few other metal bands this far along in their career can claim.

I mentioned last week how summer was winding down and soon the new release schedule would be picking up, right? Right. Well, this week is the week it would be picking up, apparently, because there is a LOT of stuff coming out - I’m not even covering it all (I have to have some priorities, you know,) but there’s plenty more where this comes from.

Bob Dylan - Modern Times: I’m not fooling anyone - this hardly qualifies as overlooked, but I wanted to mention it to make note of the various bonuses that are to be had this week. Most importantly, the album is being offered in two CD versions - a single disc in a very minimal packaging and a more lavish package with a DVD including “Cold Irons Bound” (Shot live on the film soundstage during the making of the film Masked and Anonymous,) “Blood In My Eyes,” “Things Have Changed,” and “Love Sick” (From The Grammy Awards). Those of you excited to see that Grammies version of “Love Sick” might be upset to find out that the infamous Soy Bomb incident has been edited out. I’m pretty upset, too - that was a truly unique moment in television history. I understand not wanting to give Soy Bomb even more exposure, but this is history now, and editing the footage is messing with history.

As for the various bonuses, they’re not earth-shattering, but some of you may want some of this. First off, Circuit City is offering a special CD of Dylan’s XM “Theme Time Hour” disc centered around baseball-themed songs, the big draw being an a capella rendition of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” by Dylan. The catch? You have to buy Modern Times AND another Dylan CD in order to get this disc. BOO. I can hear this in my head and it puts a smile on my face. The problem here is that the people who really want this disc likely have all the Dylan they need and so they won’t need to buy another Dylan disc. Real dumb promotion - not to mention that the price of their CD/DVD set is $10 higher than Best Buy. Best Buy is giving away a 100 page book of Dylan artwork with purchase of the album, and if you want that DVD, it’ll set you back a measly $12.99*. And guess what? Circuit City doesn’t pricematch, if that’s what you were thinking of doing.

*UPDATE: Best Buy price is actually the full $19.99 (the $12.99 I reported was an online-only price, unfortunately.) However, I’m going to recommend that unless you absolutely NEED those four songs on the DVD that you skip the deluxe and instead buy the regular jewelbox edition that comes shrinkwrapped with the 100-page artwork booklet for $9.99. The deluxe edition is, in my opinion, a complete ripoff - no lyrics and only a few extra photos in a four page fold-out booklet is not worth the extra $10 price tag. This is, hands down, the worst deluxe edition I’ve ever seen - Dylan and Columbia should be ashamed.

Ty Tabor - Rock Garden: Being a King’s X fan has been one of the most simultaneously rewarding and frustrating fan experiences you can get. One the one hand, the band, via side projects and official projects, turns out a lot of music. On the other hand, it’s hard watching them struggle and need to have so many side projects to stay afloat. However you look at it, it seems like we get something from at least one of the three guys in the band at least once a year. This time around it’s near legendary guitarist Ty Tabor with another disc of his hook-laden, heavy Beatles-influenced metal.

Ty’s also got a number of other unusual and experimental projects available for the more daring amongst you at his site, but if you’re looking for stuff like what he does with King’s X, Rock Garden is what you want to pick up.

Pete Yorn - Nightcrawler: I can’t possibly get away without mention Yorn’s new disc, as Alissa’s a big fan and has been looking forward to this. Reports say he’s going for a leaner, more natural rock sound, driven possibly by having notable producer Butch Walker at the helm (and check out his fantastic 70s throwback solo album, Butch Walker And The Let’s Go Out Tonites for an example of why this guy is such a strong man to have behind the board when you want that sound.) Guests include Dave Grohl, Leon Russell, and the Dixie Chicks. That’s an interesting combination of sounds right there.

A complaint, however: This is another disc falling victim to the “multiple bonus track” scheme that labels are foisting upon us. Okay, so I got real excited about the Def Leppard bonus track scenarios for Yeah! earlier this year, but, well, fine, I was a geek about that. This is just crappy - it’s a trend that needs to be stopped before it completely destroys fan confidence in buying music. The labels are practically driving fans to steal the music because how many of us can really afford to buy 2-5 versions of albums that come out to get all the songs they release? Regardless, plan to track down exclusive bonus tracks each at Best Buy and FYE-related stores and an exclusive download at Circuit City, so far that I’ve found. There may actually be more - and just wait for the Barenaked Ladies’ new album: I read there are a LOT of bonus track scenarious built into that one.

Pete Townshend - Who Came First (Remaster): For whatever reason, Townshend has decided to reissue his relatively recently remastered catalog again, this time rereremastered and with bonus tracks for once. One of the unusual releases in this lot, however, is the previously long out of print Who Came First, his first solo album from 1972. Initially issued on CD by Rykodisc, it had come with 6 bonus tracks, and here comes with 3 more tracks for a total of 18. I’ll be keeping my copies of Empty Glass and All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (unless I hear these re-remasters are absolutely fantacular or something) but I’m excited to finally have a chance to hear Townshend’s long-missing first album.