Sometimes, phenomenal pop success can leave an artist crippled with creative paralysis, striving in vain to match or top that commercial peak; witness Michael Jackson after "Thriller." Moby's sixth studio album wasn't quite at that level--"Play" (1999) sold a mere 10 million copies worldwide--and the three discs he released afterwards were nowhere near the spectacular failures of "HIStory" or "Invincible." But the electronic musician once dubbed "the face of techno" has struggled nonetheless for the last decade, over-emphasizing his weaknesses (primarily his monotone singing) at the expense of his strengths (gorgeous, melancholy instrumentals adorned with perfectly chosen samples).

A newly independent Moby reconnected with his roots on the dance floor and the spark of his 1992 breakthrough "Go" on his last release, "Last Night" (2008), and now, with the new "Wait for Me," he's finally made another album that recaptures the unique emotions of "Play," if not the then-startling invention. This is to say that as the languid, echoing, strings- and piano-laden tracks of his newest leisurely unfold in the Sunday-morning chill-out vibe after a sweaty night of ecstasy, he doesn't reveal any new tricks as a songwriter or a producer. But nobody does this sound better.

Moby has credited a chat with director David Lynch, who helmed the video for the new single "Shot in the Back of the Head," with the inspiration here, which is fitting, since the signature sample in "Go" came from Angelo Badalamenti's "Laura Palmer's Theme." Moby himself only sings on only one song, otherwise recruiting female vocalists--Leela James, who's heard on the title track, is one of the best, as well as the biggest name--staying strictly instrumental, or relying on evocative samples (my favorite is the soulful, bluesy chant of "The battle will be over"") that hint at hidden mysteries to keep us pondering and listening again and again.

The young Chicago pop quintet of vocalist Sars Flannery, guitarist Billy Friel and Eric Hehr, bassist Drew Potenza and drummer Adam James--collectively known as Yearbooks--are remarkably Spartan with their presence on the Web: Their MySpace page doesn't include a bio, and they've posted only one track. But when the song is as strong as "Season of Love," a wonderfully effervescent bit of power pop that brings to mind the Zombies or the Byrds reimagined in the new millennium by musicians who've also listened to plenty of Matthew Sweet and Britpop--you don't really need to hear a lot more or know the whole story to be hooked.

The group does note that it's shooting a video for the tune, and it's performing live at the Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, at 8 p.m. on July 15. If it's got a whole set as irresistible as "Season of Love," this definitely is a band to watch.

Keeping the freaky spirit of Frank Zappa's original Mothers of Invention alive and well in the new millennium, Philadelphia's experimental rockers Man Man come to the Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake St., at 8 p.m. Sunday, July 5. Expect horns; expect fractured rhythms; expect the unexpected. Chandeliers open, and tickets are $15 via www.ticketweb.com.

But like the best of their peers--Mission of Burma, Wire and the Buzzcocks--New Jersey art-punks the Feelies avoided the taint of nostalgia at the Pritzker Pavilion on Monday, their first Chicago show in 18 years.

One reason the quintet's return is so welcome is that it left a lot of unfinished business. After four brilliant albums that paved the way for acolytes such as R.E.M., the Feelies disbanded in 1991--broke, frustrated but far from creatively spent.

More importantly, their sound--a frenetic version of the Bo Diddley/Velvet Underground beat propelled by Bill Million's frantic rhythm guitar and adorned by Glenn Mercer's tubular leads--was always timeless, and it remains as unique and energizing today as it was circa their debut, "Crazy Rhythms" (1980).

The Feelies are set to perform that classic, all jagged edges and jangled nerves, at New York's All Tomorrow's Parties Festival in September. But befitting their return to the Midwest, some of the strongest material Monday came from the more organic follow-up, "The Good Earth" (1986), with songs such as "On the Roof" and "The High Road" evoking long drives through the plains as the rhythm section of bassist Brenda Sauter, drummer Stanley Demeski and percussionist Dave Weckerman rode those inimitable grooves.

Also noteworthy were two aggressive but tuneful new songs, "Nobody Knows" and "Time Is Right," which showed that the Feelies of the new millennium are every bit the band they were two decades ago, and we're lucky to have them back.

What's more, a new generation of fans seems especially eager to lose itself in that Feelies undertow. Through much of the night, the crowd in Millennium Park stayed politely glued to its seats. But the intensity slowly built over the course of a 90-minute set, and as it reached a peak with the one-two punch of "Raised Eyebrows" and "Crazy Rhythms," a lone dancer hurtled toward the stage and started frantically pogoing.

Security moved in to shoo him off, but before they could, swarms of twenty-somethings who were likely seeing the band for the first time suddenly bounded down the aisles, and the mass of perhaps a thousand twitchy, hyperactive and joyful dancers continued to lose themselves in the swirl of "Fa Ce La" and two encores that included covers of the Velvet Underground, R.E.M. and the Rolling Stones.

It definitely was a moment worth waiting almost 20 years for.

UPDATE: Jim DeRogatis talks to Robert Siegel on NPR's "All Things Considered" here.

As the music world begins to assess the complicated legacy of the man who crowned himself the King of Pop, there is no denying that Michael Jackson's climb from humble beginnings amid the belching smokestacks of Gary, Ind., to the top of the charts and worldwide superstardom will rank beside those of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and the Beatles as one of the most extraordinary rags-to-riches stories ever.

Nor is it an exaggeration to say that Jackson, who died of a heart attack after being rushed to a hospital in Los Angeles on Thursday afternoon a little more than two months shy of his 51st birthday, made a more profound impact in the arenas of soul, R&B and dance-pop than any other singer or songwriter in history.

Sadly, these accomplishments also will forever be intertwined with one of the most tawdry and tragic public meltdowns that pop culture has ever witnessed, with long shadows cast by charges of child abuse, behavior that ranged from mildly eccentric to disturbingly bizarre and the star's inability to create worthwhile new music divorced from his personal turmoil throughout the last 18 years of his career.

In many ways, Jackson's biggest musical success turned out to be his biggest handicap, since its beyond-all-measures accomplishments were something he could never top.

Released on Nov. 30, 1982, the singer's sixth solo studio album "Thriller" became one of the bestselling discs of all time, with sales estimated as falling anywhere between 40 and 100 million copies worldwide. But despite the much-vaunted impact of its genre-blurring sounds on radio and the pop charts--it spawned six Top 10 singles, including the back-to-back No. 1 hits "Billie Jean" and "Beat It"--and the fact that its big-budget videos broke the unofficial color barrier at MTV, real fans never thought it his finest work.

That honor belongs to "Off the Wall," the 1979 album that actually pioneered the mix of funk, disco, pop, soul, jazz and rock polished for mainstream consumption on "Thriller." With songs such as "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" and "Rock with You," and collaborations with superstars such as Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, who clearly viewed the then 20-year-old star as a peer, "Off the Wall" is the album hardcore fans reach for, including celebrated acolytes such as Justin Timberlake and Usher.

For that matter, more moving than anything on "Thriller" is the 1972 ballad "Ben," another No. 1 hit and a song that Jackson, right at the start of his solo career, invested with so much emotion that it instantly transcended its origins as a love song to a killer rat from a B-grade horror film.

And, of course, there are the irrepressible, irresistible, unrelentingly upbeat songs of the Jackson Five, the family group that featured Michael and four of his eight siblings. Dismissed as bubblegum pop by some critics during their hit-making prime from 1969 through 1971, in retrospect, they stand as one of the most heartfelt and enduring acts that the legendary Motown Records ever produced. Michael's vocals in particular shine through, with the prepubescent star somehow singing in a voice wise and soulful beyond its years.

It's one of the great ironies of his career that Jackson's voice pitched higher and more closely evoked a young child the older he got--though this somehow fit his infamous Peter Pan-like obsession with childhood and refusing to grow old.

While some manifestations of this could be overlooked--the pet chimp, the amusement park on his Neverland ranch, the bones of the Elephant Man and the rest--others, like the disfiguring plastic surgery, could not. Nor could the disturbing facts that in 1995, he settled charges of having sexual relations with a 13-year-old boy by reportedly paying the child's family $20 million, and that a decade later, Jackson faced criminal charges for having sex with another minor.

The superstar was acquitted of those charges in 2005, but music industry experts remained divided over whether he could ever rebuild his career. His last two albums, "HIStory" (1995) and "Invincible" (2001) were commercial and critical failures, dominated by songs rife with paranoia and full of weird, messianic images. He hadn't toured the U.S. in two decades--his last Chicago shows were at the Rosemont Horizon in April 1988--and the first four of the much-hyped comeback gigs set for London's 02 Arena in July already had been postponed, with bookies in the U.K. laying odds that Jackson would cancel outright.

Now, the question of whether the King of Pop could ever have recovered all or some of his past glories will be just another of the many troubling mysteries always linked to his name.

SIDEBAR: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN SONG

Throughout his career, Michael Jackson's music often seemed to comment directly on the events and issues in his life, with the topics shifting from the challenges of growing up early in his career to chronic complaints of being persecuted toward the end. Here is a look at some revealing lyrics offering an intimate glimpse at the man behind the music.

* "With a Child's Heart" (1973): "With a child's heart/Go face the worries of the day/With a child's heart/Turn each problem into play/No need to worry no need to fear/Just being alive makes it all so very clear."

* "I Can't Help It" (1979): "Looking in my mirror/Took me by surprise/I can't help but see you/Running often through my mind/Helpless like a baby/Sensual disguise/I can't help but love you/It's getting better all the time."

* "Man in the Mirror" (1988): "I'm starting with the man in the mirror/I'm asking him to change his ways/And no message could have been any clearer/If you wanna make the world a better place/Take a look at yourself, and then make a change."

* "Tabloid Junkie" (1995): "It's slander/You say it's not a sword/But with your pen you torture men/You'd crucify the Lord."

* "Privacy" (2001): "Ain't the pictures enough/Why do you go through so much/To get the stories you need/So you can bury me?/You've got the people confused/You've got the stories confused/You try to get me to lose/The man I really am."

Its recent recorded output could never be called prolific, and it may not perform live often, but any appearance by Steve Albini, Bob Weston and Todd Trainer--collectively known as Chicago noise-rock gods Shellac--is certain to leave your mind rattled and your ears ringing for some time to come. The band performs at 8 p.m. Saturday and at noon on Sunday after opening sets by Bear Claw and Three Second Kiss at the Bottom Lounge, 1375 W Lake St. Tickets are $12; call (312) 929-2022 or visit www.bottomlounge.com.

Exactly one month after indie-rock record producer and former Wilco musician Jay Bennett was found dead in bed at his home in downstate Illinois, Urbana-Champaign officials have said he died of an apparently accidental overdose of a common but controversial pain killer.

Champaign County Coroner Duane Northrup told the Associated Press that tests show the 45-year-old musician died from fentanyl, a drug commonly found in patches prescribed to treat chronic pain.

In late April, Bennett wrote on his MySpace blog about dealing with intense pain from a hip injury suffered years ago during a dive from the stage while playing with Titanic Love Affair. He was preparing to have surgery, but was concerned about his lack of health insurance.

According to "Drugs of Abuse," a publication of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration:

First synthesized in Belgium in the late 1950s, fentanyl, with an analgesic potency of about 80 times that of morphine, was introduced into medical practice in the 1960s... Illicit use of pharmaceutical fentanyls first appeared in the mid-1970s in the medical community and continues to be a problem in the United States. To date, over 12 different analogues of fentanyl have been produced clandestinely and identified in the U.S. drug traffic. The biological effects of the fentanyls are indistinguishable from those of heroin, with the exception that the fentanyls may be hundreds of times more potent. Fentanyls are most commonly used by intravenous administration, but like heroin, they may also be smoked or snorted.

In a ruling that already is infamous as one of the most wrong-headed in the history of the American judicial system -- not to mention that it will forever stand as the best evidence of the contempt of the old-school music industry toward the music lovers who once were its customers -- Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a divorced mom from Northern Minnesota, was found guilty last week of illegally downloading 24 songs, with a penalty of $80,000 per track and a grand total of $1.92 million.

As someone who fails to see the distinction between analog-taping a song off the radio (which still is legal) and downloading it onto one's hard drive (and the Recording Industry Association of America, the major labels' mafia-like enforcers and trade group, never proved that the defendant shared her files with anyone other than their own digital spy), Thomas-Rasset is guilty primarily of bad taste: Take a look at what those 24 tracks were, as listed by the p2pnet Web site.

I mean, really: Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me"? The Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris"? Journey's "Faithfully"? And Richard Marx's "Now and For Ever"? Ack!

To his credit, however, the Chicago-born and resident-still lite-rocker Marx has issued a strongly worded defense of Thomas-Rasset that is just as much an indictment of the industry that made him famous. It reads:

As a longtime professional songwriter, I have always objected to the practice of illegal downloading of music. I have also always, however, been sympathetic to the average music fan, who has been consistently financially abused by the greedy actions of major labels. These labels, until recently, were responsible for the distribution of the majority of recorded music, and instead of nurturing the industry and doing their best to provide the highest quality of music to the fans, they predominantly chose to ream the consumer and fill their pockets. So now we have a "judgment" in a case of illegal downloading, and it seems to me, especially in these extremely volatile economic times, that holding Ms. Thomas-Rasset accountable for the continuing daily actions of hundreds of thousands of people is, at best, misguided and at worst, farcical. Her accountability itself is not in question, but this show of force posing as judicial come-uppance is clearly abusive. Ms. Thomas-Rasset, I think you got a raw deal, and I'm ashamed to have my name associated with this issue.

It would be nice to see other artists on that list join Marx in defending Thomas-Rasset, though the bigger questions are: What can this woman do now, and what does it mean for the rest of those who download music? As always, the ars-technica Web site has an excellent analysis of the situation, listing the six options open to Thomas-Rasset, from paying the fine to (most music lovers' choice of the best-case scenario) hoping this case becomes the focal point for a charge by Congress and the Obama administration to address the fundamental problems in American copyright laws ignoring the historic changes of the digital world.

Though it's primarily known for its "eccentric soul" reissues, the founders of Chicago's Numero Group label also have a deep and abiding love for the wildly inventive and genre-blurring qualities of vintage psychedelic rock, and with their latest release, they've unearthed as brilliant a buried treasure as I've ever heard from the fertile period that followed "Sgt. Pepper's" and the much-vaunted Summer of Love.

Hardly a hippie haven, the psychedelic trip as interpreted in Rockford, Ill., circa 1969 was darker, grittier and on occasion more sinister and threatening than anything heard in sunny San Francisco--not for nothing does Numero describe the group of studio musicians who called themselves Pisces as aiming for "the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, but somehow sounding more like the Velvet Underground's meth'd out Midwest cousin." As with the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, that hint of menace makes the group's journey toward the white light all the more powerful.

Previously heard only on three ultra-rare 45's issued back in the day--the group's one album remained unreleased until this collection--Pisces' other big asset is the warm, robust Earth Mother voice of sometimes vocalist Linda Bruner, who shines on tracks such as the enchanting "Dear One," the lovely "Say Goodbye to John" and the haunting "Sam." The band was not immune to the indulgences of the times--a song like "Mary" sinks under the weight of all that phasing and studio trickery, while the somber spoken-word bit in "Genesis II" would have been better left to the Moody Blues. But overall, the enduring melodies and unique ambience of "A Lovely Sight" sound as vibrant and relevant today as they did four decades ago.

Fifteen years after its self-titled debut, in what we might now call the "post-post-rock era," the automatic waves of hyperbolic praise that once greeted any new release from the Chicago instrumental collective Tortoise have ebbed, and it's become much easier to hear the band as what it always was: A group of progressive-rock geeks who happened to understand that a good groove beats pointless displays of virtuosity every time, crafting the ideal soundtrack for a pretty but incomprehensible art film that no one will ever make.

This is to say, Tortoise never intended to reinvent the wheel, just have fun spinning it 'round in the studio. Sometimes the results were brilliant--"Djed" from "Millions Now Living Will Never Die" (1996) remains their "21st Century Schizoid Man" or "Close to the Edge"--and sometimes they evoked that annoying hipster Muzak that they play in the lobbies and elevators of W hotels. And the group's sixth proper album and first release in five years does not depart from that mix.

On the plus side are some of the proggiest pieces Tortoise ever has recorded: There are moments during "Prepare Your Coffin," "Penumbra" and "Minors" when you could swear Keith Emerson himself was twirling the knobs of that vintage Moog synthesizer (though it most likely was drummer and Soma Studio owner John McEntire). On the other hand, there are several tunes you could swear you've heard before--isn't "The Fall of Seven Diamonds Plus One" this band's ninth or tenth Ennio Morricone homage?--and several otherwise promising tracks, including the opening "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In," are needlessly interrupted mid-trance with pointless stylistic detours seemingly designed only to underscore that wow, these guys sure can mix it up. (It's ambient techno! No, it's ironic jazz fusion! Wait, wait, I know--that's cumbia!)

As always, how much all this appeals to you will depend on how much you like spooling that imaginary movie in your head--or how much you enjoy staying at the W.

Formed in the summer of 2006, the group initially planned to build a more conventional sound, but the departure of its vocalist during the recording of its first EP, "Seventy One Percent," set the musicians in a new direction, and it comes to fruition in the alternately pummeling and lulling grooves of "Red," a second EP released last week.

Several of the new tracks can be heard at www.myspace.com/thealayaconscious, or catch the band live at a benefit for Children's Memorial Hospital at Capone's, 19081 Old LaGrange Rd. in Mokena, on July 26.

As the music world continues to await the Justice Department's yea or nay on the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation, Billboard reports another interesting development out of the nation's capital: Seth Hurwitz and his Maryland-based company It's My Party have filed an 11-count lawsuit seeking to block the merger and charging that Live Nation "deliberately" and "unlawfully" acquired monopolistic power over the national concert scene.

The lawsuit also alleges that Live Nation has used its influence to "coerce" artists from only appearing at amphitheaters and other venues that the mega-company controls.

I.M.P. ranks beside Chicago's Jam Productions as one of the few remaining vital and vibrant indie promoters in the U.S.-- it books D.C.'s vaunted 9:30 Club as well as the area amphitheatre, the Merriweather Post Pavilion--and Hurwitz testified along with Jam's Jerry Mickelson at the Senate hearing on the merger earlier this year.

In other news, Ticketmaster chief Irving Azoff, who would play a major role in the merged corporation, has refused to speak to the Chicago Sun-Times, but he has talked to Kara Swisher of All Things Digital--not that he's said a heck of a lot. Hitsville critiques the interview and notes some of the questions left unanswered here.