A document of the 2008 tour of the same name, the Glitter and Doom Tour played only scattered U.S. and European dates and came two years after his last release. Orphans was a three-volume compilation of songs that didn’t find their place on previous records, along with a handful of new material, and his last studio album of all new material, Real Gone, was back in 2004. With nothing new to promote, the Glitter and Doom Tour promised nothing but the opportunity to see Tom Waits live, and although he performed songs from both releases, the resulting live album has more in common with his pair of theatrical releases from 2002, Alice and Blood Money.

Glitter and Doom isn’t about a live show as much as it is about a live performance. There’s nothing natural about the brute voice that Tom projects so well during the opening “Lucinda/Down To The Well,” a brilliant combination of two Orphans tracks that far surpasses what the two originals had. The album is worth checking out for this song alone, but it’s unsettling the first time you hear it. Tom Waits has used the grittier aspects of his voice quite effectively for the past 25 years, but this pushes things to the extreme and into the realm of theater. “Goin’ Out West” is a nice romp, sounding like a stripped down blues song done to the tune of T. Rex’s “Bang A Gong.” There’s a foreboding that’s absent from the Orphans version on “Fannin’ Street,” and his excellent band gets a chance to stretch out as Waits barks lyrics on “Get Behind The Mule.”

Waits sticks mostly to songs from the last decade or so, but even then his choice of material sometimes seems random and plays more like an alternative detour through the past 20 years than any sort of greatest hits live collection. “Falling Down” is a nice nod to his previous live album, 1988’s Big Time, as the song was featured on that record as the album’s lone studio song. And “Singapore” reaches back a little further to the time when he made a major break from largely acoustic guitar and piano-driven songs to a potpourri of sounds you couldn’t easily slap a label on.

The theatrical nature of the performance starts to wear a little thin by end of the first disc on songs like Real Gone’s “Circus.” And there’s plenty of this on the second disc, such as “Tom Tails,” which consists of nothing but between-song banter and jokes. It’s entertaining when you’re in the right mood, but sometimes you wish a guy with these immense talents and songs this good would play things just a little bit more straight. Of course, part of being a Waits fan is learning to enjoy the ride. Glitter and Doom rewards, even if, much like the randomness of the cities the tour played in, it comes across more like a backwoods road trip than a full-blown drive.

In 2007, R.E.M. were at a crossroads. They had released three albums since Bill Berry left, and while some, like 1998’s Up were artistic highs, they were increasingly spending more time in the studio and getting weaker results. With the follow up to Around the Sun looming they wanted to break the mold so they booked 5 nights at the Olympia Theater in Dublin to test material in front of a live audience as recognition to the way they used to work up new songs by trying them out on tours. In order to prepare for the shows they went back to their earliest albums and looked for material that might fit in with their new direction. Most of the new material played at these concerts ended up on 2008′s Accelerate, and the double-disc Live at The Olympia contains all 39 songs played during the 5 nights, including two new songs that didn’t make the cut for Accelerate. But unlike R.E.M. Live, the only thing bloated here is the length.

Live at The Olympia is over two and a half hours long and avoids the big hits of the 90’s, as well as most of their minor hits of the 80’s and almost all of their recent work, in favor of truly a back-to-basics approach. R.E.M. mine their IRS years, playing almost the entirety of their 1982 debut EP Chronic Town along with half of Reckoning and several lesser-known songs from Fables of the Reconstruction, Lifes Rich Pageant and Document, and a few scattered songs from the Warner Brothers years. Besides the emphasis on more rock-oriented material, the most surprising thing about Live at The Olympia is just how well this older material works with the new. It’s testament to how far they had come with the pre-Accelerate material that the one dud out of all the 39 songs is a song from Around the Sun, the very album that they were fighting against making.

Live at The Olympia might just be that rare live album that Peter Buck had always talked about. It captures a legendary band that never found a reason to quit, even after they finally succumbed to recording a truly bad album, and finds them reinventing themselves by returning to what they do best. For those only familiar with the band’s 90’s material, the plethora of great early songs like “Kohoutek,” “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” and “Letter Never Sent” will provide a killer introduction to their past while also bringing you up to date with the where they are now. And for those of us that got on board early on, it’s the closest we’re likely to get to going back. But for the band, it marks a new start and a rewinding of the clock. To borrow one of their lyrics, they have begun again. And it’s great the tape was rolling this time.

“Make up your mind, make up your own mythology,” Doug Marsh sings on There Is No Enemy’s “Planting Seeds.” He could easily be talking about the singular vision that shaped the two albums that largely defined the band and helped shape the sound of indie rock in the previous decade, 1997’s Perfect From Now On and 1999’s Keep it Like a Secret. While 2006’s You in Reverse sounded tentative, only occasionally hinting at the brilliance that so many fans of guitar-based rock fell in love with, There Is No Enemy sounds confident. They’ve created an album that sounds less like a patchwork and works as a whole, and more importantly, they sound like a real band again.

“Hindsight” could easily fit on Keep it Like a Secret, with textbook indie-rock hooks and a concise structure, and “Pat” is Built to Spill at their most economical and aggressive, but many of the highlights of the album are the mellower moments. “Life’s A Dream” features some unexpected harmonies that provide a welcome relief from the serious nature of the lyrics, and “Things Fall Apart” could easily sit alongside the very best of the band’s songs.

There is No Enemy is far from perfect. There are some prodding moments, most noticeably during the middle section of the record, especially on “Oh Yeah,” but as a whole this is the strongest record they’ve put out in a decade and a welcome return to form. Like Dinosaur Jr, Built to Spill seem to be able to reconcile the mythology of their past with their artistic pursuits of the future. It can’t be an easy task, but it’s awfully nice to be able to go along for the ride.

Jennings’ lyrics speak of “blood on the door” and “blood on the wall” and from the sound of this record, there’s blood on the line as well. The singer-songwriter takes full control on Blood of Man, playing all of the instruments and recording everything himself much like he did on his 1997 debut EP, but the music here is much darker, recalling Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska both in approach and in subject matter. But where that record featured acoustic guitars and stories of closed factories and dead end small town America, Blood Of Man is plugged in and addresses war, suicide, murder and drugs. Like Springsteen, Jennings knows that with a heavy dose of doom and gloom you have to sprinkle in a little optimism, and it’s here in songs like “Tourist” and the first-childhood-kiss recollection of “Sunlight,” where “Minutes freeze like popsicles and drip their seconds down our shirts.”

This return to his roots shouldn’t be surprising to longtime fans. Jennings has always put his art first, not releasing his first EP until he was truly satisfied with it, painstakingly recording each part by himself in a run down apartment, and reportedly turning down major label recording contracts early on in favor of doing things his way without compromise. Blood of Man signifies a new direction for Jennings, whether he’ll continue down this path remains to be seen, but it’s clearly a career reset from a guy who could have been perfectly content making records like his last couple. Then again, great artists are never really content are they?

PW & The Ghost Gloves Cat Wing Joy Boys continues in the vein of his MP3-only records, but doesn’t reach the highs of the song collage that launched those releases, last year’s 49. Paul seems to sense that’s he’s in a rut. “Finally found a pair of cowboy boots that fit/now I hang around and stare at the shine I spit.” He’s looking to someone for inspiration in “Gimme Little Joy” and threatens to blow the roof off the place if he finds it.

There’s an argument to be made that the first take is often the best, but too often the songs sound like they were being written as they were recorded. “Dangerous Boys” sounds the most inspired and rehearsed. It could easily fit on some of his more produced albums, and it’s hard not to imagine this being played live on some future tour. “Drop Them Gloves,” the most rocking song on the EP, would also sound great live, probably far better than the version featured here. Often he’s trying to re-create the sound of a band hammering it out in the basement, and sometimes it works to great effect, but on a song like this it becomes apparent that most bands are, well, bands.

When Westerberg gets melancholy the one-man band is less of an issue. “Love On The Wing,” with its plaintive piano introduction sounds like an outtake from 1999’s Suicaine Gratifaction. “Ghost On The Canvas” features acoustic guitars and pseudo-religious themes. “We dream in color/others they color their dreams.” It’s an intriguing song, certainly better than “Good As The Cat,” but maybe the feeling that he’s not being treated as well as the family feline is what drives him to the basement in the first place. And with this EP, warts and all, we are lucky for that.

It’s important to point out that this is a record. For the first time since 2004 you can purchase an honest to goodness CD of new non-soundtrack Paul Westerberg music. And it’s hard not to look at this as a sign of things to come. Its independent release on Westerberg’s Dry Wood label could easily be a test for something more substantial. Maybe he’ll find a sympathetic producer and take the lessons of the basement recordings and apply them to something better crafted and professional sounding. Or maybe not. Either way it’s nice to get a unexpected dose of rock and roll like this. A little grit in the Pro Tools.