I though I knew Stevie Wonder from his Original Musiquarium. Boy was I wrong!

Does it get any better than this?

If you like country music — Chet Atkins, Hank Williams, Lyle Lovett — you neeeeeed this disc! It is sweetly melodic, easy on the ears, beautiful. And even better . . . I can imagine this guy sitting down to write and peform with (early) Tom Waits.

Gorgeous.

July 18

Where have I been? I’m still listening to this disc for the first time, but it seems an instant 5-star classic — one of the least clichéd works I’ve heard in a long time.

The first cut, “There’s No Secrets This Year,” opens with a simple, repeating riff from a fuzzily driven guitar, drums coming in after a few measures. As the lead singer comes in, it becomes obvious that this would make for terrific, stadium-filling sound. But weirdly enough, it also sounds very good to at the lower volumes my tinnitus-tormented ears usually demand. Something about this first cut reminds me of “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age, except for people past 40.

By the third track, “Growing Old Is Getting Old,” I’m thinking these guys must be fans of Lindsey Buckingham’s “Not Too Late” from Under the Skin (2006).

Dreamy stuff.

July 19

Day two, and I’m still listening. Turning to All Music Guide, I found the following pan:

Silversun Pickups hold Smashing Pumpkins as close to their heart as, say, Mudhoney hold the Stooges — perhaps even more, as Silversun Pickups (whose very initials are the same as the Pumpkins’) don’t attempt synthesis or reimagination, they merely seek continuance, acting as though nothing happened between Siamese Dream in 1993 and Swoon in 2009 . . .

They merely wallow in washes of sound, deriving equally from guitars and whispered vocals, never pushing forward, never achieving any sense of momentum, just glimmering in the sunlight. It’s pleasant enough, particularly when the breathy vocals fade away to leave behind cascades of guitars, but even at its best, it’s nothing more than an approximation of Smashing Pumpkins at their peak, with all the interesting parts stripped away.

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OK, I’ll admit the Smashing Pumpkins similarity, but this less-agressive approach to the sound still works for me. I could listen to this for hours and hours . . .

With our without comment, here are my favorites from Rolling Stones’s College Radio Top 10 List from June 2009 (I really should subscribe to RS — a better mag than I remembered!). All are available on Napster:

• Iron and Wine, Around the Well: If I could only listen to one artist for the rest of my life, it would be Sufjan Stevens (Thanks, Charlie H), but Iron & Wine is a close second (Thanks, Charlie).
• Black Moth Super Rainbow, Eating Us.
• Metric, Fantasies: Something about this album reminds me of U2′s Passengers’ Original Soundtracks. OK, well not after track 5 gets started. This is a groovy disc. “Blindness” is a standout.
• Silversun Pickups: Where have I been? These guys are AWESOME, renewing my faith in the notion that rock isn’t quite dead.