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News Item: The Australian physician team that treated Keith Richards' head injuries after he either a fell from a tree or slipped on a boat dock--the facts are cloudy--confirmed that he had suffered "no permanent brain damage." How could they tell?

Gomez, How We Operate (ATO)

Up till now, we've accurately accorded Gomez, along with Supergrass and Belle and Sebastian, the distinction of being at the top of BritPop's second rank of bands, the first rank occupied by the likes of Blur, Oasis, The Verve, and of course our once and former darlings, Radiohead. Not any more: How We Operate is a statement recording. Propelled by Tom Gray's distinctive and Ian Ball's sweet vocals, How We Operate bursts with imagination and energy from the opener, "Notice," through "See the World," "How We Operate," and "Hamoa Beach" with a dizzying array of instrumentation, cadences, and lyric sensibilities. Ball, the principal songwriter, adorns silly love songs with riveting metaphors: "love is like a dragonfly/So beautiful it will die and disappear before your eyes" with the wry disclaimer "I'm no philosopher. I'm no poet" ("Hamoa Beach"). Oh, yeah? In fact, so varied, so unique is each song--none of this "find a groove and turn it into a rut" business--that comparisons to Beck and Supergrass are appropriate. How We Operate will be on my "Best of 2006" list.

Belle and Sebastian, The Life Pursuit (Matador) Since we last dropped in on Belle and Sebastian (The Boy With the Arab Strap, No. 74; fold your hands, child, you walk like a peasant, No. 84) the Glaswegian septet scored mightily with Dear Catastrophe Waitress and the hits "Step Into My Office" and "I'm a Cuckoo." They've long since abandoned the notion that the band was a casual affair: B&S tours now. With their fifth full-length release, The Life Pursuit, Belle and Sebastian has also moved further and further away from the murderous, knife-wielding menaces that populated their early output, but their art school love affair with the downtrodden and displaced still dominates the landscape. Sprightly melodies and deceptively simple arrangements barely conceal troubled souls: an adolescent girl's Joycean inner voice competes with the real voice of choir practice ("Act of the Apostle"); a broken romance wrought on a flower laden brae ("Another Sunny Day"); the illicit tryst of the on-the-run criminal ("White Collar Boy")--a small sample of the dead-end lives and corrupt personae that we've come to expect from B&S. The Life's Pursuit's remaining oddballs include a pseudo-art student ("Sukie in the Graveyard"), a former singer in a band turned beautician ("Dress Up in You"), and a homeless woman ("For the Price of a Cup of Tea"). Then again you can ignore the lyrics and bathe in the warmth of the upbeat music and Tony Hoffer's sublime production. Either way, The Life Pursuit is a winner.

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, Under the Covers, Vol. 1 (Shout)

In a sense Under the Covers is a reclamation project for both Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs, neither of which has released any notable product for over a decade--if of course you discount The Bangles' ill-conceived Doll Revolution and Sweet's barely noticed Living Things. Hoffs quit the Bangles and pursued a dead-end solo career before settling down with hubby, film director Jay Roach (Austin Powers, Meet the Parents). After working with each other and Powers star Mike Myers in the Austin Powers joke band, Ming Tea, Sweet and Hoffs conceived Under the Covers, Vol. 1, a collection of jangly covers from the dawn of time and a reflection of their reverence for a genre that inspired L.A.'s fabled "Paisley Underground" of which both were denizens in the early '80s. Originally, Sweet and Hoffs planned to release the collection pseudoanonymously (think Traveling Wilburys) as Sid & Susie, but the suits at Shout's distributor, Sony BMG, prevailed.

Under the Covers, Vol. 1 is a marvelous collection of well--and lesser-known nuggets culled from rock's iron age: The Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing," Love's "Alone Again Or," and Stone Poneys' "Different Drum" along side The Zombies' "Care of Cell #44" and The Left Banke's "She May Call You Up Tonight." The renditions are either flawless clones (The Mamas and The Papas' "Monday, Monday," Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl") to reverent interpretations such as Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." And with the exception of misplaced "ahh-ahh-ahhs" that Hoffs smears over a couple of choruses--the kind of stunt that marred her solo output--the vocal arrangements are spot on. Vol. 1 is shrink-wrapped in L.A. slick production. For something this trippy, you almost beg for a bit of raggedy, impromptu good humor. But that's a minor quibble when you consider the obvious love of song that produced this excellent set.

Calexico, Garden Ruin (Quarterstick Records)

Iron & Wine, The Sea & The Rhythm; Woman King (Sub Pop)

Calexico/Iron & Wine, In the Reins (Overcoat) Garden Ruin is a mystery. Gone are the quirky mugs on Sergio Leone and border town pastiches. In their place Joey Burns and John Convertino have produced a fairly staid, at least by Calexico standards, pop album. However, there is nothing staid about Garden Ruin's issues. From the opener, "Cruel" ("Cruel, heartless reign/Chasing short term gains/Right down to the warning signs ... Even the horizon is gone/Weather flees underground/ Future's left to wallow in fortune's waste"), a reflection on unwise environmental management, to "Smash's" disintegration of love ("And I stash all of the reasons/Dash them against the wall/And I smash your heart into tiny little pieces"), Garden Ruin is a dark rumination on all that we are and can't help being: injurious, nasty, vindictive ... small. Even a return to form with "Roka (Danza de la muerte)," with a nod to Leonard Cohen's "Who by Fire." can't avoid thematic inevitability. Garden Ruin continues with its dual themes of personal ("Letter to Bowie Knife") and environmental loss ("Deep Down," "All Systems Red"), reaching the perhaps unavoidable conclusion that the garden is indeed in ruins, both, I think, the metaphorical garden that is life on the planet and the mythical garden from which man was forever banished. In a sense, I was so hoping for a Calexico album with mock solemnity and sly winks. It appears that planet whose resources are systematically and carelessly plundered is simply too much to take lightly.

Iron & Wine is Sam Beam, a lone Floridian whose oeuvre challenges on two distinct but interwoven levels. First, he is an unparalleled songwriter completely at ease in his home studio, effortlessly multi-tracking voices, guitars, and banjos- all Sam all the time. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, he writes densely packed poetry, notable for its singular imagery and unaffected irony. There are also two distinct phases to Beam's career so far, the DIY/lo-fi home studio product,

The Sea & The Rhythm and The Creek Drank the Cradle, and the decidedly hi-fi pro studio output, Our Endless Numbered Days and Woman King, although all have been released by Sub Pop. The EP-length The Sea & The Rhythm may or may not be a suite of similarly themed songs, although each resonates with images of mothers and children, birth, death, messianic betrayal, and divine forgiveness, where human frailties are on open display beneath the attentive gaze of a weary, sympathetic God. Biblical references abound: "give to the holy mother change/Christ across her knees" ("Beneath the Balcony"); "Late night, the cock crows shortly/ morning through the open doorway/all us servants beg the master" ("The Right Descending"); "naked the Judas in me/fell by the tracks but he lifted me high" ("Jesus the Mexican Boy"); "Waking before you/I'm like the lord/who sees his love though we don't know" ("Someday the Waves"). For all their religiosity, none of the songs are overtly--or perhaps even covertly--well, er, religious. Each is a carefully drawn vignette of hot summer's nights in the Miami barrio ("Beneath the Balcony"), lovemaking in the surf ("The Sea & The Rhythm"), or running away to Las Vegas ("Jesus the Mexican Boy").

Woman King eases up only a bit on the righteous metaphors. "Jezebel" lives up to her name and legend. "Mary, carry your babe/bound up tight like lips around a whimper" opens "Freedom Hangs Like Heaven." Still, like a prodigal penitent, Beam's protagonist in "Gray Stables" harbors his covetousness in guilty moonlit shadows, "lady, would you love me if I left her/laid breathless in the sun ..." Similarly, the narrator of "Freedom Hangs Like Heaven" promises legitimacy, if not intimacy, to the unborn love child of another woman apparently worshipped from some distance, which would also describe the spiritual voyeur of "My Lady's House." Beam's Lilith ("Evening on the Ground") is as defiant as Adam's, "you will never make me/learn to lay beneath the mountain ..." If this sense of voyeuristic distance pervades Woman King, the title track collects the artifacts of a farmwife and suggests "hundred years, hundred more/ someday we may see a/woman king ..." all but oblivious to the irony. Then again, all of the songs on Woman King are in a sense portraits of biblical or latter day heroines. Woman King also departs from Beam's living room, adding sister Sarah Beam on vocals and Jim Becker (guitar), Brian Deck (Modest Mouse's producer), and E.J. Holowicki (percussion).

I've got a bud 'round town, who's simply too well known to identify, who once pondered a career in music. Indeed, he harbors a compulsive songwriting habit, routinely churning out remarkable cassettes that are judiciously meted out to a few friends. I've nourished the faint hope that some day we could get him into a studio with a proper band and turn those lo-fi demos into a memorable CD. So it would seem to have been with Sam Beam, whose songs, despite some studio treatment on Our Endless Numbered Days and Woman King, beg for a sympathetic band. Enter Joey Burns, John Convertino, and Calexico and the longish EP In the Reins, where Beam's compositions explode into fully realized productions of depth and vitality. Calexico's impact is felt immediately on the opener, "He Lays in the Reins," with John Neihaus's plaintive pedal steel and a middle eight sung in Spanish. Indeed, the songs adopt a distinctive Southwestern feel in the band's capable hands. Beam seems also to have left aside his overt Biblical metaphors for secular portraits, while plumbing recurrent themes: murder, betrayal, and just plain bad luck. From the redemptive "Prison on Route 41"--seems the protagonist's whole family's locked up-to the lethal triangle of "A History of Lovers" to the mysterious death in "Red Dust," Beam limns guilty souls, who may or may not have paid for their crimes, but live with miserable self-loathing. However, very much like the potent Richard Thompson, Beam has a quiet sympathy for those who have made poor life decisions, whose souls cry out with pain and regret ("Sixteen, Maybe Less," "Dead Man's Will"). In the Reins is a remarkable album not only for another dose of Sam Beam's imaginative, unforgiving songwriting, but for Burns and Convertino's backing. Each arrangement complements the song unerringly-seldom too little, never too much. Whether you're a Calexico fan or an Iron & Wine fan, In the Reins is simply too good to pass up.

Abbreviations. We're going to give this concept one last shot. This time instead of cutesy eighth notes, we'll deploy asterisks (*) as an amiable substitute for stars--a shameless bid for a gig with Rolling Stone--again on a scale of 0 (A Flushing Sound) to 5 (Hosanna, Hey Sanna, Sanna, Sanna, Ho!).

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium (Warner Bros.) *****

Oops. The Chili Peppers have reached middle age. The once and former surf punks have shed their drug habits and penchant for wearing tube socks--and only tube socks--on stage. Keidis, Flea, Frusciante and Smith have produced a monumental two-CD set that embraces melodic honesty and three-part vocal arrangements without sacrificing a whit of their gritty ska punk heritage. An awesome tour de force.

Mark Knopfler and Emmy Lou Harris, All the Roadrunning (Nonesuch) ****

Okay, it took someone whose gifts are at least equal to Knopfler's and whose Southern creds would stanch his smarmy cartoon takes on American culture. What remains are honest portraits of lives gone bad, love grown old, and a landscape gone to seed. Okay, he's still not convincing, but it's a start.

Bruce Springsteen, We Shall Overcome, The Seeger Sessions (Columbia) ****

Springsteen assembled a community gazebo band for these sessions: accordion, fiddle, banjo, and a brass section. Out of that unlikely ensemble he's wrought an affectionate portrait of an American original. The liner notes say everything was cut live and without rehearsals, which has imbued each track with a sense of intimacy and immediacy that's sorely lacking from Bruce's own work. The result is his best in some time. However, Seeger is present only in name and perhaps spirit. I believe he would have enjoyed immensely Springsteen's novel and joyous takes on timeless classics.

Paul Simon, Surprise (Warner Bros.) ****

We're used to Simon's steamy, sultry urban portraits- be they of Manhattan, Rio, or Jo'berg. The surprise is that Surprise is at once intimately autobiographical and culturally panoramic. Unlikely partner Brian Eno underpins the proceedings with measured layers of electronica, an unusual and arresting counterpoint to Simon's still-excellent-after-all-these-years songwriting.

Death Cab for Cutie, Plans (Atlantic) **

There is a mild virus going around some backstages called "coldplayitis", inflicting otherwise talented bands with an unfortunate tendency to ape Coldplay's anthemic minimalist, hook-driven pop. The hits "Soul Meets Body" and "Crooked Teeth" are pretty good pop songs. The rest of it might very well be infected with the virus.

Cat Power, The Greatest (Matador) ****

Cat Power is Chan Marshall, who's backed on this outstanding release by Mabon "Teenie" Hodges, co-writer with Al Green of the classics "Take Me to the River" and "Love and Happiness," and brother Leroy Hodges, two mainstays of Memphis soul and Green's studio band. The result is a quiet, nuanced ambience that fully complements Marshall's husky alto and shimmering lyricism.

Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cold Roses (Lost Highway) ****

Cold Roses is a sprawling, ambitious two-disc set and Adams and the Cardinals at their laid back (almost) alt-country best. You'll play through both discs, and then you'll go back and play 'em again. And can you beat a sentiment like "Let's take a ride to the easy plateau/Where the cold don't come and the wind don't blow/Moonlight flickers in the water below ..."? Makes you want to kick back and play 'em a third time.

Jewel, Goodbye Alice in Wonderland (Atlantic) ***

After the portentous flop of 0304, tho' my 12-year-old gobbled it up, Jewel bids farewell to her folkie roots. Despite her captivating voice, I've had trouble getting this one in the queue for repeated listenings.

Enya, Amarantine (Reprise) ***

There was a point some time ago when Enya's records all started to run into one another. Amarantine displays all that is good about our favorite Irish recluse, but I'm not sure if you put it, Shepherd Moons, The Memory of Trees, and so on in a carousel changer and hit the "Shuffle" function, that you'd be able to tell what tracks came from what albums.

The Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way (Open Wide/Columbia) ***

I can still take or leave The Dixie Chicks, but props to Natalie Maines for having the courage to speak her mind. The Chicks have borne concert cancellations, verbal abuse from other artists, and the nasty vengeance of the Nashville music establishment, which at last report still bleeds red, white, and blue from wounds real or imagined. The defiant Chicks are "Not Ready to Make Nice." You go, girls.

The Sensible Sound Vanity Nook. Tooting our own horns, or not.

Government Issue, Strange Wine (Giant)

Tom Lyle, Sanctuary (Vile/Skyclad)

Back when punk was the reluctant king, there were three cities that mattered: New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. New York had CBGB, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Sonic Youth; San Francisco had the legendary Mabuhay Gardens, the Dead Kennedys, The Mutants, and The Nuns. Washington, perhaps the unlikeliest locale of all, boasted a vibrant hardcore scene with seminal bands like Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Fugazi, and, considered by some the best of them all, Government Issue. Government Issue was a turnstile of talent revolving around front man John Stabb and bassist/guitarist Tom Lyle. Yes, that would be our Tom Lyle, techno ubermensch, Mahler aficionado, and vinyl devotee.

Government Issue was unique because it lasted for nine years--epochal

by punk standards, and released eight full-length CDs as well as four EPs on eight different labels. I've only come across one EP, Strange Wine, and that in a used CD store. By all accounts it is one of GI's essentials, a blazing array of hardcore punk in both the studio and live at CBGB by its last lineup, Stabb, Lyle, and Jay Robbins on bass and Peter Moffett on drums. We tend to forget, as new and very, very good bands, populate the airwaves and net streams by the dozens, that punk rescued rock. Its anger, swagger, and violent angst bred the perfect antidote to the excesses of the '70s--and, thank you, we've been down that road (see my guide to essential '70s listening, "Why the '70s Didn't Suck", in No. 78--back issues 800/695-8439). Strange Wine embodies the punk ethos, party hard and play harder, with deafening sturm und crash, especially the live tracks. BTW, Flipside Records released a two-concert DVD Live 1985 last year. Strange Wine has been reissued and reportedly expanded on Dr. Strange Records.

It's rare enough to find musicians who are also thoughtful critics, but to have one in our midst is indeed special--tho' the punks might puke on that one. After Stabb dissolved GI in 1989, he, Moffett, and Robbins all soldiered on with various bands. Tom Lyle, however, repaired himself to his studio and produced Sanctuary, heralded by the label as "x-Government Issue guitarist digs his own grave". Sanctuary offers the Lyle seldom seen with GI, a hard rocker with an ear for melody and mood. Sanctuary lays out an aural assault of churning, overdriven guitars, an angry thrash firmly anchored by drummer Adam Wade--The Nuns by way of Metallica. Lyle vents relentlessly across ten tracks of post-punk fury with sentiments like "muscle on muscle so you can heal/steel on steel, I carve the way/blonde on blonde for how long?/one on one, sanity/sound on sound, novelty" ("Sound on Sound"). The rage is also keenly directed: "look out toward the sea,/ships with blazing guns/hard to imagine the screams of/victims far away/as the hammer comes down, when/they're on their knees" ("No Escape").

I'll admit to an abiding admiration for anyone, yes even the acts we occasionally savage, who's got the moxie to step up to a microphone or into a recording studio and lay a chunk of their being on the line, all for their own vision. After nearly a decade slugging it out on the mosh circuit, Tom Lyle exorcised what was left of his demons and found perhaps some small solace, in this case a renewed sense of inner peace, in Sanctuary, which is after all a safe haven, the last line of inner defense. Far from "digging his own grave," yes, another more permanent form of sanctuary, Lyle made an exhausting artistic statement that endures. Brave stuff.

Kevin East (Ravensbourne)

Admit it. You've "vanity Googled'. You've typed your name into the search box and hit Enter. You've been astonished by (1) the incredible number of namesakes out there in cyberspace and, perhaps more importantly, (2) the paucity of hits that were actually you--the vast majority being your namesakes, some with fascinating cyber-stories. Yes, that's how I uncovered the Soul Bro' from Low and his sole release, Kevin East. Both Ravensbourne's and East's web sites relate how this spirited countertenor was discovered belting out '70s soul covers in a karaoke bar in London's Low--as in class--district. While the tale is redolent of a small, indie label desperately searching for a breakthrough act and an unknown singer searching for a recording contract-a courting dance we've seen how many times?--Kevin East doesn't sound as if it's an act of desperation. In fact, although East's voice occasionally rises above background quality--think a lesser Aaron Neville or George Benson, the disc is a pleasant enough, if slightly retro, collection of originals revealing considerable songwriting gifts, shared with Ravensbourne's man-about-everything, Neil March. Kevin East's arrangements are solid, the playing and recording first rate, and the experience enjoyable. And if this were the late '70s or early '80s, "Oh, Girl" might have taken a sizable bite out of the sweet soul charts.

R.I.P. Vince Welnick, Arif Mardin, Buck Owens. Email: [e-mail]. HEE HAW!

--KE