Whither Modern Rock?

This post began as a conversation in a Philly music club about a month ago. A band took the stage and began playing a type of rock music that to me was the quintessence of Modern Rock (capitals required).

"This," I yelled (it was loud), "is Modern Rock."

Some friends I was with wondered: Just what is Modern Rock? What distinguishes Modern Rock from good, contemporary rock? I thought about it. And thought about it. It's been rattling around for some time. Now the subject might seem untimely, but with the recent release of the Foo Fighters' Greatest Hits and the single "Wheels" -- a band and song that are illustrative of the history of Modern Rock -- now seems like a good time for a brief examination (this is a blog, after all) of the form.

Unlike a lot of contemporary indie rock that draws on the post punk of the late '80s and early '90s (Think Pixies, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., The Smiths), Modern Rock is a direct relative of the classic rock of the '70s. It's a big, muscular sound that can easily fill a stadium. The first Modern rock acts, to me, are the better-known, so-called grunge bands of the Northwest. Green River, Pearl Jam, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains and The Screaming Trees. These bands were all innovative in their own right, and a lot of their music is good. Or at least it was good at the time. Nirvana really never belonged in the conversation with these bands. Yes. They were loud, wore a lot of flannel and were from Seattle, but they were taking their cues from the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr. and The Meat Puppets, not Led Zeppelin or the Who.

In its early days, the music of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden sounded a lot like it was a reconnection with the great classic rock of the '60s and '70s. There were big anthems and awesome guitar solos. Rock band members looked like guys again. The well trussed and over-made-up likes of Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crue were immediately forgotten. This was a good thing.

But following the success of these bands (Nirvana included), big record companies raided the artist stables of small indie labels like Sub Pop, SST and Caroline and flooded the market with everything from Smashing Pumpkins to the Breeders. Some of these bands caught on. Others didn't. But a radio formula was perfected. Guitar solos became passe, but the muscular rock sound, the interplay of loud choruses and quiet verses and big male vocalists (Eddie Vedder was the gold standard) became important parts of radio success.

The next strategy for record companies after all the established indie acts were signed (and then dropped when they didn't sell) was to sign bands that fit the new formula. Stone Temple Pilot's first release, 1992's Core is a perfect example. To be fair, STP became more interesting with every subsequent release, but their early work is formulaic Modern Rock. It was Pearl Jam Cliff Notes: big guitar, big drum beats, anthemic choruses, gristly, angsty male vocalist. In fact STP's success cast them as the real beginnings of Modern Rock as a formula and not an organic musical movement. So influenced by record label was STP that they changed their name to satisfy Atlantic before Core was released (They were Mighty Joe Young and then Shirley Temple's Pussy). This does not smell of artistic purity, though to be fair, all three names are pretty bad.

The later half of the '90s was dominated by STP clones (I used to say these singers sounded like Scott Weiland sounding like Eddie Vedder) as Soundgarden broke up and Pearl Jam retreated into a decidedly anti-corporate and overly pensive period. Reprehensible rock acts like Everclear, Papa Roach, Fuel, Seether, Nickleback and worst of all, Creed dominated the radio with big, anthemic rock garbage that still has a heavy influence on the so-called alternative rock radio of today. (I can't even bring myself to account for the so-called rap rock horror show of Limp Bizkit and to a lesser extent, but no less irritating, Linkin Park). By this time, Modern Rock was hardly even a sound anymore. It was a fashion statement. It was a style as easy to slip into as a pair of old Levis

Modern Rock claimed college rock as its antecedent, but it had nothing in common with the great college rock of the early '90s. It was big and bloated. It was loud, but it was essentially pop. It was the soundtrack of the frat house. The college kids, always looking to react against the prevailing tastes, did so in many ways. The early aughts saw the garage rock revival of The White Stripes and The Strokes and the dark and funky post punk of Franz Ferdinand and Interpol. It was a sideways move: The new stuff was angular, nor as masculine (in that neanderthal sort of way) as Modern Rock, but it was still loud. I think Modern Rock wrought the very pensive, ambient sounds of today's indie rockers like Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Deerhunter, etc. The quiet, folksy chamber pop of these "new big things" to me sound like a reaction to the testosterone overdose of Modern Rock.

Which brings us full circle to the new Foo Fighters song, "Wheels." The Foo Fighters claim a lineage to several terrific bands of the '90s. Front man Dave Grohl was the drummer of Nirvana. Bass Player Nate Mendel is a founding member of Sunny Day Real Estate. But the Foo Fighters are really Grohl's band. The really great self titled debut in 1995 was essentially all Grohl. The songs were demos he wrote and recorded waiting for Kurt Cobain to show up to record or rehearse. That first album is a blistering power-pop, punk, well, I'll say it, masterpiece.

But it wasn't long before Grohl began to send Foo Fighters down the Modern Rock road (and too a lot more commercial success). The Colour and the Shape has some great songs, but the sharp punk attitude of the debut is already quite faded. "My Hero," an overly nostalgic mess of a song was a big hit and set the stage for much to follow. Grohl was still good. On every album he'd have some good songs, but the bad was catching up with him. "Wheels" sounds like it could have been recorded by Bon Jovi. It's sentimental, banal and smoothly produced. It's lifeless. It has nothing in common with the Foo Fighters of 1995.

The forces of Modern Rock can be seen pretty well in the production of the last Kings of Leon album, Only by Night. Kings started out as a sort of Appalachian Strokes but got slicker every time out. Their third album, Because of the Times, was, in my opinion, a really brilliant, challenging rocker that got lost at times but still seemed vital. It clearly didn't sell enough. Only by Night is focused and slick but the crazed Americana that made the first two records, Youth and Young Manhood and Aha Shake Heartbreak, so good is nowhere in the mix. It just wasn't radio ready, I guess. The Followills are too strange, perhaps, to ever be lumped in with Bon Jovi, but I fear what their next album will sound like. If it's like the Foo fighters, another good band will have bit the dust (apologies to Freddie Mercury).

Modern Rock was a formula that did more to kill the vitality of the form than nearly anything I can think of. It is only fitting that its heyday was the final days of big music. As CD sales decline, and big pop anthems become fewer and further between, Modern Rock hangers-on have all the vitality of a string quartet (my apologies to the Kronos Quartet). I don't necessarily think rock is dead, so to speak. There's plenty of vital stuff out there, but it seems like its piece of the listening pie is getting leaner and leaner. In 20 years if we're wondering how rock died, the answer is Modern Rock in all its excessive, radio-friendly awfulness.

U2, The Boss, artists of the decade?

So I got the new Rolling Stone, it's best of the decade edition (there it is, to the right of this post). I always expect to have arguments with best of lists. I think that's the point of such lists. They're completely subjective, even when, as Rolling Stone claims, they consulted numerous musicians and others in the "music biz."

Some of the magazine's choices were questionable: U2's No Line on the Horizon is a good album, but the best of the year? Don't think so. But hey, it's debatable. I also had a hard time figuring how they managed to pick The Strokes' Is This It as the second best album of the decade, ahead of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But that's what criticism is about... you make choices and support them. Others will agree or not.

There's no harm in making over-the-top proclamations. In my own lists I've argued hard for the Doves, a band that nearly no other publication I've read has any time for (haven't seen them mentioned in any other best-of list I've read). But Rolling Stone made several choices that really left me flabbergasted. Under "Artists of the Decade," good picks like Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Jack White and Kanye West shared space with MIA, Bruce Springsteen and U2.

Now I know Rolling Stone is no longer a rock magazine. It's really a pop publication. But MIA? MIA has one hit song this decade... How does that qualify her as an artist of the decade? No matter how great, I don't see how you can earn artist of the decade cred with one song.

I was equally baffled by U2 and Springsteen. Both are great artists. I like U2 a lot, and their most recent '00s albums are good, but the band's influence -- and they are perhaps one of the most influential band's of the last 25 years -- is based on their work between '82 and '92. During that period the band released at least three masterpieces: War, Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. Their current work, at its best, recalls the sound they pioneered then.

Springsteen's greatest work predates even that period. The Boss has been really busy the last 10 years, and I like the political work he's done, but his period of influence stretches back the the '70s. At his best, he recalls the early work of the E-Street band or the starker songwriting of Nebraska. The Boss is cool, but an artist of the decade? Maybe an artist of his generation, but that generation is over.

Perhaps rolling Stone is simply catering to its aging base. But even an old -- by pop standards -- taste like mine found those choices almost absurd. I could see arguments made for Wilco, Kings of Leon, Conor Oberst or even Ryan Adams... All would have been better choices for artists who've influenced the sounds and tastes of the last 10 years.

I will give Rolling Stone credit, though. I think they were spot on for the best song of the decade: Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." So the writers aren't completely under an '80s rock. But, seriously, they needed to think a little harder about artists of the decade. U2 and the Boss are big, but their best days are long gone.

Favorites (and frustrations) of ‘09

These are my favorite albums. They are albums that spent a great deal of time in playing over speakers in my car or from my computer (no one plays CDs anymore). They were chosen only on the basis of how much I like them. There’s no objective consideration for their artistic merit or their place in the great annals of rock music.

Before I get to my top 10, though, I should mention some albums for which I had much greater expectations and a few that I thought were good, but didn’t rise to the band’s potential.

There were several big disappointments for me this year. Wilco’s new album Wilco (The Album) was a big one for me. Though “Wilco (the Song)” and “Bull Black Nova” are great, the album as a whole is sleepy and uninspired. I listened to it a few times and forgot all about it. I had higher hopes for Franz Ferdinand’s Tonight: Franz Ferdinand but found mostly the same formula without the energy of the first two records. Dan Auerbach, one half of one of my favorite band’s, The Black Keys, put out a solo record that I found really lacking.

Some albums were good but not quite top 10 material for me but worth mentioning:

Pearl Jam: Backspacer -- A nice album from the grunge godfathers. A few slow clunkers away from my top 10.

Telekinesis!: Telekinesis! -- A fun, guitar pop album with moments that recall Summerteeth Wilco.

Them Crooked Vultures: Them Crooked Vultures -- Great hard rock riffage from an awesome, super power trio. Ultimately, though, the songs get away from the group a few too many times.

Mighty Mighty Bosstones: Pin Points and Gin Joints -- Nothing new here, just that classic Bosstones sound.

Nirvana: Live at Reading -- What else is there to say about this album? It’s a two-CD collection of a great band at the height of its abilities. An awesome performance to remind you why the band kick-started the alt-rock of the ‘90s. Definitely a favorite, but I thought I’d save space on my top 10 for new music.

OK, now for the top 10:

10. Dinosaur Jr.: Farm.

Dinosaur Jr. reunited Lou Barlow and J. Mascis for 2007’s Beyond, the first time the two had played together since the original band split in the late ‘80s. And what do they do? Put out the best material of the group’s entire catalogue, including J Mascis’ well-known Dinosaur recordings of the ‘90s sans Barlow. The music on Farm is more of Beyond. It’s raw ear-bleeding rock with the explosive drumming of Murph and the roaring guitar of Mascis, perhaps the most unrecognized guitar genius of his time.

9. Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

This album snuck up on me. At first listen its just really nice guitar pop with little substance. SingerThomas Mars’ vocals waft like light background noise… He might as well have been singing in French. But the songs are infectious and better performed than I first gave them credit for. I found myself waking up with “Lisztomania,” “1901,” and “Lasso” on my mind. I’d hum the tunes to myself and sing the breezy lyrics. The French band’s fourth studio album is a work of power pop perfection.

8. Reverend and the Makers: A French Kiss in the Chaos

A friend introduced me to this band. He’d seen it perform on the Later… With Jools Holland. So I started listening to A French Kiss and became intrigued by the band. You could hear the dancy Brit pop influences -- Stone Roses and Blur -- but what makes the band interesting is Jon “Reverend” McClure’s sharp songwriting. He attacks everything from modern advertising to the war in Iraq with a uniquely British snark. These are songs with a keen social consciousness that belie their party music foundations.

7. St. Vincent: Actor

Texas songwriter and guitarist Annie Clark -- who goes by the stage name St. Vincent -- played with some interesting acts before venturing out on her own in ’07. She was a member of the weird and psychedelic Polyphonic Spree and later was a member of singer songwriter Sufjian Stevens’ touring band. Actor finds Clark in really terrific form. It’s a collection of haunting and beautiful songs, “Actor out of Work” recalls Arcade Fire; “The Strangers,” hints at Portisehead. But the album is wholly original. This is Clark finding her own voice -- a voice with real promise.

6. Silversun Pickups: Swoon

OK, so this band owes an awful lot to the early ‘90s sounds of the Pixies, Sonic Youth and above all the Smashing Pumpkins. In fact Silversun Pickups share a lot more than initials with the early ‘90s alt-rockers. Both bands share walls of distortion, vulnerable, melodic vocals, dance-beat drumming and a bass player in high heels. The Silversun Pinkups aren’t just a throwback, though. The songwriting is fresh and the performances are heartfelt. This is a fun album, both hard rocking and gorgeous.

5. Arctic Monkeys: Humbug

This band has been overhyped, even by the hype-happy British music press. But the four-piece English rock outfit deserves every bit of high praise its earned since its frenetic debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Humbug finds that band slowing (way) down the pace for a Sabbathy sound inspired a great deal by producer Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures). Still present, though, is singer Alex Turner’s keen, critical lyrics -- a British rock staple that goes back to the Kinks. Humbug was a risky shift in sound, but one that definitely paid off.

4. The Veils: Sun Gangs

This band grabbed me with the single, “The Letter,” a tour-de-force song of beautiful reverberating guitars and the remarkable voice of front man Finn Andrews (son of XTC keyboardist Barry Andrews). Andrews is a great songwriter and a wonderful singer -- though his is a voice that you likely wither love or hate. Sun Gang’s is a grand album, equal parts intense and melancholy.

3. Sonic Youth: The Eternal

I’m not sure Sonic Youth needed a comeback record. They’ve never really gone anywhere, but The Eternal is such a good album it’s hard to believe the band’s members are in their 50s. Kim Gordon has move from bass to guitar and vocals and Mark Ibold from Pavement was brought in on bass. The addition gives the band a solid rhythm section with the brilliant Steve Shelley.

The incredible thing about Sonic Youth is that they continue to challenge your ears some 30 years after their founding. The trademark guitar squalling and chugging is still there, but it still sounds as though the rest of rock hasn’t caught up with Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo. From the opening track “Sacred Trickster,” (maybe the best Sonic Youth album opener ever) the band is full of energy. Other great songs include “Antenna” and “Malibu Gas Station.”

The Eternal is what a rock record should sound like --edgy, loud, mysterious and it kicks a lot of ass.

2. Neko Case: The Middle Cyclone

I love Neko Case. There is no comparable singer songwriter. The New Pornographer member has been outstanding as a solo artist for the better part of this decade. Her two most recent Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and The Middle Cyclone are beautiful albums of strange, haunting songs about death, jealousy, killers, nature and more, all delivered by Case’s gorgeous voice.

The Middle Cyclone shares a lot with its predecessor. These are songs that might be classified as genuine Americana -- roots music that struggles with the strange and murderous reality of the New Land. Middle Cyclone stakes the same path and subject matter with reverberating guitars and echoing rhythm sections -- a sound that is simultaneously new and ancient. Case is mesmerizing right from the first track: “This Tornado Loves You” a song sung from the perspective of a Tornado chasing after an unnamed lover.

Sings Case: “Carved your name across three counties / Ground it in with bloody hides / Their broken necks will line the ditch / 'til you stop it, stop it /Stop this madness / I want you.”

It sounds impossible, but the song works. It’s chilling. Case is not only the most compelling female artist I’ve heard, she’s one of the most wonderfully strange songwriters, period.

1. Doves: Kingdom of Rust

The Doves have quietly compiled an impressive body of work over the past decade. Since it’s 2000 debut, Lost Souls, the Doves have recorded perfectly consistent albums of ambient-tinged, dancey indie rock -- a sound at which British indie acts have excelled since The Stone Roses.

2009 found the band topping 2005’s masterful Some Cities with this year’s wonderful and overlooked Kingdom of Rust. Kingdom is not an album unified by theme and pace, which is what you’d usually look for in a great album. It is, however, unified by the Doves’ adventurous sonic palette, a space-rocking sound that is comparable to Radiohead. Jimi William’s vocals have a consistent quality that bind the songs together no matter the stylistic influence -- tracks draw from from Johnny Cash “Kingdom of Rust”) to Blondie (not kidding. Listen to “Compulsion” and compare to “Heart of Glass”).

The Doves manage to make every song really terrific. Even when “Compulsion” plunges the band into Blondie-like disco-pop, the band retains something grand. Every song on the album is an accomplishment. “10:03” builds slowly into a loud rush of big-guitar chord power and “The Outsiders” and Greatest Denier” are some of the band’s most muscular rockers to date. The band does beauty well, too. The melancholy “Birds Flew Backwards” is a slow, penatrating song and the anthemic “Lifelines” closes the album with a rush of optimism

Kingdom of Rust is a big album with perfect production. It’s not the synthetic overproduction of Weezer or the contemptible fellow Englishmen, Muse. Each Kingdom is composed of big, spacious songs with spectacular arrangements of cinematic proportions. It’s an album you can easily get lost in and by far, my favorite of the year.

Where'd They Go? The Bosstones are Back

One thing about Liner Notes of which I'm proud is its shameless nostalgia for the music of my Gen X youth. I've always felt, and still believe, the music of my generation was never able to successfully toss off the great canonical weight of '60s rock, even though a great deal of music in the '80s and '90s is just as good if not better. There may be no band for which I suffer more nostalgic love than The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, a Boston band that I have seen more times than I can count and often for nearly no cover. It was a band that played around New England (where I'm from) regularly and long before anybody had heard of Nirvana.

I could barely believe it when I learned that just this week the band had a new album, Pin Points and Gin Joints, its first album of new material since 2002's Jackknife to a Swan. The Bosstones are a hopelessly underrated band. Generally regarded as slavishly formulaic, a novelty or just plain uncool, the eight-piece group, fronted by the incomparable Dicky Barrett, were pioneers of the so-called "ska-core" sound, merging hardcore punk with two-tone ska. That sound launched dozens of copycat bands (none of which were nearly as good) and influenced a lot of the pop punk that became so popular.

But the band was always better than the sum of its genre-bending parts. It's founding guitarist Nate Albert was a great musician (I'm sure he still is but he left the band in the late '90s) and the songwriting, much of it by Barrett and bassist Joe Gittleman "The Bassfiddleman," was usually sharp and genuine -- They wrote blue collar anthems of working, drinking, love and loss (of wallets) with a great ear for pop melodies and punk spirit.

The band even came pretty close to becoming a big mainstream act -- they were the prom band in the Alicia Silverstone (whatever happened to her?) film Clueless, playing "Someday I Suppose" and "Where'd You Go?" But it quickly faded from prominence, a one-trick-band. After the well received and commercially successful Let's Face It in 1997, the band faded into obscurity, a step above a '90s one-hit wonder.

The band's fade was hastened by 2000's Pay Attention, which was pretty bad (probably the only real dud in the 'Tones' discography). But the Bosstones switched labels, signing with the punk label Side One Dummy and released Jackknife to a Swan, an album that found the Bosstones recapturing a lot of the old grit and spirit of their early years. It was the sound of a band that had gotten some of its mojo back. It wasn't as great as Devil's Night Out or More Noise and Other Disturbances, but it was better than the band had sounded in 10 years.

Pin Points and Gin Joints slows the tempo down a bit from Jackknife but the mojo is still there. For the new, 14-song set, the Bosstones settle into an easy-skanking groove that favors the two-tone sound, though the punk vamps are still there. Also there are the usual Bosstones themes: Send offs to old loves, drinking (in Boston), Boston, troubled youth (growing up in Boston) and other assorted tales of blue collar living (in Boston). If Jackknife was a return of sorts to Question the Answers, Pin Points finds the Bosstones in the more radio friendly, Special's-like sound of Let's Face It.

And above all that, what's really back is what always made the band great: Bosstone's bonhomie. To draw from the overused hypothetical of the '04 presidential election, The Bosstones were always the band you'd want to hang out and have beers with. They are not hipster doofuses. They are not too-cool-for-school auteurs. The Bosstones are a horn-section away from being construction workers. At least that's what ithas always felt like. Pinpoints has that same beery, singalong quality.

The new album isn't brilliant, it's just very good music. It's exactly what a great band that's been together since 1985 should sound like. In fact, the whole band sounds really comfortable belting out one great ska tune after another... it's not material that is as memorable as the group's classics, and the tunes are certainly predictable (what more can you do with punked out ska?) but it's good anyway. There's no artifice here. It's a band of old friends. Just fun stuff to listen to with that classic Bosstones sound.

And that's good enough for me.

1983 Vintage U2 On Demand

I'm working on my year-end list of favorite albums for early next week but thought I should check in with this short note.

Some of the most interesting music "content" can be found on On Demand, in my case, Comcast On Demand. One of the music channels always worth checking out is called concert.tv. They have indie rock concerts and numerous appearances by many really great bands on the UK's Later... With Jools Holland (why the US doesn't have a show like this is beyond me).

I've seen great stuff there recently: two sets by The Veils at the Bowery Ball Room in New York. A show by Evan Dando (The Lemonheads) in the same space. The Jools Holland appearances by Radiohead and the Band of Horses are very good. There's even a Jools Holand appearance by the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing a very spirited version of "Dani California," during which the camera cuts to the audience to reveal Thom Yorke (yup, of Radiohead) bobbing his head furiously in appreciation... It's an image I thought I'd never see.

But to the point, concert.tv currently has in its list of memorable rock shows a 1983 German concert of U2. This is less slick than the famous Red Rocks film but really terrific, anyway. U2 in that period were an awesome live band.They still are a great live band, but the youthful, Irish funky post-punk rock was really awesome in its time, and that comes through very forcefully watching the U2 guys circa 83.

Though U2 is a band somewhat famous for its lack of virtuosity, by 1983 they may have been one of the most whip tight bands on the planet. All three musicians -- The Edge, Larry Mullen, Jr. and Adam Clayton -- are nearly flawless. The vintage songs here are great to hear live: "Gloria," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "I Will Follow," "New Years Day" and "Two Hearts" are just awesome.

Check out the show. It's divided into two 45-minute (approx.) sets on concert.tv. You won't be sorry. If you've forgotten how great these guys were, this will remind you.

MMW's Radiolarian set: Who you callin' a jam band?

For better or worse, Medeski, Martin and Wood have always found themselves in a strange musical place. Well, strange when it comes to categorization, that is.

The band first rose to prominence as an opening act for the jam band Phish. With that gig and the very danceable soul/funk album Shackman (Rykodisk, 1996) the trio of keyboardist John Medeski, drummer Billy Martin and bassist Chris Wood became a hippy favorite. Their odd birdlike symbol could be found on legion VWs, Volvos and any other vehicle with a bike or ski rack attached to its roof. They were lumped in with jam bands like Phish, Rusted Root (remember them?), Blues Traveller and all the other ‘90s Horde Tour regulars.

Yet despite its entre into the jam band scene, MMW never really belonged. They have always taken themselves more seriously. Yes, MMW always circle back to fundamental rhythms rooted in funk, soul and blues, but they do so with what is sometimes devious experimental abandon. Following the band’s rhythmically ambient and dancy Combustication, recorded with DJ Logic, the band released The Dropper, which is remarkably experimental and chaotic. It finds the trio really pushing the envelope of not only what kind of form can be considered music, but what sounds can be musical.

It was after The Dropper was released that I caught the band at the Electric Factory and they assaulted the amassed hippy/dance crowd with nearly 45 minutes (or at least it felt that long) of loud, formless, throbbing discord. It was thrilling stuff for anyone into experimental jazz. Every time they started to coalesce into a conventional rhythm, the band would break down into drumbeats that resembled the whole kit being tossed violently down a set of stairs while Medeski worked what on stage appears to be a mountain of keyboards and effects processors into all sorts of otherworldly chirps and electric burps. The Phish-heads were visibly disappointed, which made the show all the more enjoyable for me.

This month’s release of the Roadiolarians series box set will likely do more of the same for the casual fan looking for something he can throw on the CD player during a backyard barbecue. There are a few trademark funky jams here among the 29 studio tracks (The set will include all three Radiolarians albums, a new, live album and a documentary film about the band) but the album is primarily free-form, experimental and in some places charts new and really interesting territory for the band.

For those unfamiliar with the Radiolarians series, it consists of three full-length albums the band recorded over the course of 18 months in what was really a reverse process. They workshopped the songs on the road before documenting them in the studio. Each was released separately on the band’s new record label, Indirecto. (I doubt a conventional label would ever have let them record and release this material the way they did.)

The 29 recorded tracks on this set are an awful lot to catch up on if you find it suddenly dropped in your lap. Unlike Much of MMW’s work over the last 15 years, Radiolarians finds the band shifting gears often, mixing up their trademark funk and soul with afro-cuban, ambient and straight rock rhythms. The rock songs here are the ones that really made me stop and listen through the first few listens. “Reliquary” on the first disk, “Flat Tire” on disk two and “Undone” on disk three. Moments of “Undone,” which features Wood a distorted, electric bass (something a sound he uses more frequently here) sound a lot like the post-rock of Tortoise.

The band has a lot of fun, too. On disk three, it tackles the old spiritual "Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down" -- a favorite of bluegrass pickers and once sung by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy on his old band Uncle Tupelo's acoustic March 16-20 1992 -- with a New Orleans piano stomp, but the melody is on a fuzzed out (again) electric bass. It has to be heard to be believed.

Unlike The Dropper, MMW is not experimenting with chaos here. And it's not trying to satisfy a particular fan group. Its approach is a wide-open sonic palette in which anything three musicians can do with their instruments is attempted. The band here is at the top of its form in an extensive collection of performances that reward multiple listens. It's not music you can dance to, and it's not the kind of music you can put on while "entartaining." And that's a good thing.