It was really something, going to college in the early 90s. On the one hand, you had friends around you who are really obsessed with music, and anxious to pass along recommendations. On the other hand, the swamp gas of alt rock was finally bubbling close enough to the surface that you could get a heady whiff of it. And you liked what you smelled. You found a lot of new bands, even in the first few years after you graduated, when the alternative rock stations were still finding weird, shiny new things and dangling them in front of you.

When did it go wrong? Was it 1997, when you started hearing more and more from bands that didn't know how to spell their own names, like Limp Bisquick and Qorn? Maybe your friends were just becoming lame, and they weren't sending enough good CDs your way. So that for some four years, you discovered maybe three bands that were worth following up on. Sad.

Are things changing? The other day, on a commercial radio station that plays something like adult contemporary rock, which you put up with because even Steve Winwood beats System of a Clown, you heard a quirky song by a band that you hadn't heard from since college, when they had a novelty hit with a song about a girl using vaseline instead of butter. And after that, a moody new song about something by a heartbroken ex-hipster who used to specialize in songs about nothing. Is there a fresh wind blowing in popular rock and/or roll?

I'm here to testify: yes there is, and here are five newish CDs to prove it.

Beck, Sea Change Once upon a time, I would have scoured Rolling Stone and Spin to learn about the backstory here, the heartbreak and remorse that has transformed Beck from a funk-happy ironist to a painfully sincere crooner. Does he really mean it when he sings, "Mister Bluebird at my window/I can't hear you anymore"? It doesn't even matter. The title has it right — the success that was spoiling Beck has turned to dross, and he's got the blues, or at least he's doing a damn good impression of them. Be warned, though: as another reviewer said, there is no more devil's haircut, no more ass pants.

Interpol, Turn On the Bright Lights Yes, it sounds a lot like Joy Division, yes, the lyrics make less sense than old Beck ("The subway is a porno"? "Friends don't waste wine when there's words to sell."?). Did it bother you with Beck? Did you not like Joy Division? This is a compulsively-listenable CD, and as for the charge that they're just 80s recyclers, I'll quote the Boston Phoenix's Annie Zaleski:"It's in alluding to these bands that Interpol find their own charms — not as post-punk clones, but as preservers and extenders of a sound and an era."