“It was never alive,” he said.

Mr. Obama had just delivered an impassioned keynote address at the historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church in Selma, Ala., and he was surrounded by hundreds of black men and women jostling each other for a chance to shake his hand or touch his jacket.

But while the majority of the crowds in Selma flocked around Mr. Obama, he was far from the only show in town. Down the street from the Brown Chapel, Hillary Clinton spoke to parishioners of the First Baptist Church, declaring by her very presence an intention to fight Mr. Obama for a significant stake of the black vote. To amplify her commitment, Bill Clinton, who has unparalleled appeal in the black community among white politicians, dropped in after her speech like a cotton-haired exclamation point.

Even an ostensible show of unity underscored the intensity of the competition. On Sunday afternoon, the Clintons and Mr. Obama stood together in the front line of a march retracing the steps that civil-rights activists took 42 years ago across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In 1965, the marchers met with state troopers wielding billy clubs, bullwhips and tear gas. The savagery and bloodshed, broadcast live on national television, set the stage for the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

“We’re all amazed,” said Morgan Lewis, an 81-year-old veteran of the 1965 bridge crossing, who grinned when he added: “They are coming to the bridge crossing to gain more of our votes.”

MR. OBAMA ARRIVED FIRST.

On Saturday night, he visited the National Voting Rights Museum, where a wall of notes handwritten and signed by the original marchers reached from floor to ceiling. The uniforms and nightsticks of the Alabama state troopers hung in a showcase down the hall. The tattered shoes and plaster foot imprints of the men and women who marched lay under glass in rooms visited as piously as a chapel.

Outside the museum doors, a rollicking street fair cluttered Water Street, with booths selling everything from portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. to belt buckles and chicken-on-a-stick. Teenagers flirted and listened to Southern rap music. Many people said they were waiting to hear the next day’s speeches before making up their minds between the two candidates.

A few miles away, past many shuttered stores and dilapidated houses, previews of those speeches were already getting underway in the Elks Lodge, where U.S. Representative and civil-rights lion John Lewis was being honored.

Between poems and testimonials, and a singing performance by Dreamgirls chanteuse Jennifer Holliday, Mr. Obama’s surrogates argued his case. Kim Ballard, a white probate judge for the county with jurisdiction over Selma, told the crowd that he considered Mr. Obama the “No. 1 contender for the Presidency.”

Artur Davis, a Congressman whose district includes Selma, said that Mr. Obama’s election would give an incalculable boost to the country’s impoverished blacks.

After stepping off the stage and behind a partition, Mr. Davis said he thought it was a “smart strategic choice” for the Clinton campaign to have brought in the former President. But, he said, Mr. Obama’s campaign “was what that movement was about.”

The next morning, Mr. Obama wasted little time in making that point himself.

In a packed gym at the local community college, dressed in a dark suit and silver tie and standing a few feet away from an empty table reserved for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama articulated his connection to the civil-rights movement in the clearest terms he has used so far.

“If it hadn’t been for Selma, I wouldn’t be here,” he said, referring to the movement that paved the way for his Kenyan father to come to the United States. “This is the site of my conception. I am the fruits of your labor. I am the offspring of the movement. So when people ask me if I have been to Selma before, I tell them, ‘I’m coming home.’”

The speech, which Mr. Obama’s campaign said he wrote himself, received shouts of “Preach!” and “Yes!” and repeated bursts of applause from the public. For the most part, he stayed away from matters of policy and focused more on establishing his civil-rights credentials with the audience at hand.

He called the Iraq War “ill-conceived” but left the overtly negative political rhetoric to Mr. Davis, who attempted to turn Mrs. Clinton’s superior experience against her. “Longevity,” Mr. Davis said pointedly, “can make you calculate when you cast your vote on the war.”

As noon approached, Mr. Obama sped over to the historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where hundreds of people gathered outside, alternately chanting “Obama!” and “Let us in!” Dignitaries and select parishioners squeezed into the 11 pews, while the rafters sparkled with camera flashes when Mr. Obama entered.

Under an illuminated cross, gold organ pipes and hanging chandeliers, Mr. Obama closed his eyes and nodded to the hymns and prayers. He shook his head in a show of embarrassment when Bishop T. Larry Kirkland illustrated his point about racial equality by saying, “Show me a John Fitzgerald Kennedy and I’ll show you a Barack Obama.”

But for all his squirming, Mr. Obama seemed eager to encourage the comparison.

“It’s not enough just to ask what the government can do for us—it’s important for us to ask what we can do for ourselves,” he said. Later, he echoed Robert Kennedy when he talked about “ripples of hope.”

He spoke of a “poverty of ambition” to describe the lack of self-value among a consumerist black youth, an “empathy gap” to explain what he called the current administration’s lack of caring for the underprivileged, and a “Joshua generation” to characterize the inheritors of the original civil-rights activists. All of those phrases audibly resonated with the crowd.

At the end of the ceremony, he linked arms with Congressman Lewis, sang “We Shall Overcome” before greeting the masses outside.

“He has a living connection to the movement,” said Evelyn Dawson, of Atlanta, who watched Mr. Obama from the church’s pews. “That connection became clear today.”

Or, as Mr. Lewis said in a later interview about Mr. Obama’s weekend in Selma: “It tends to demonstrate more than ever before that he can, and did, relate deeply and strongly with the African-American community.”

SUNDAY ALSO SERVED AS A TESTAMENT to Mr. Clinton’s status among black voters—and to Mrs. Clinton’s willingness to use it, despite his tendency, as at the funeral of Coretta Scott King in February of last year, to overshadow her.

“Bill Clinton is an icon in the black community in the way no other white has ever been,” said Hank Sanders, a popular Alabama State Senator. “He cannot do anything but good for Hillary.”

Mrs. Clinton, dressed in a green pastel pantsuit and describing herself to parishioners of the First Baptist Church as the “beneficiary of what happened in Selma 42 years ago,” enjoyed a much more modest crush of supporters than Mr. Obama.

Neither of the Clintons was originally slated to attend.

On Feb. 26, several days after Mr. Obama announced his commitment to speak at the commemoration, the Montgomery Advertiser reported that Mrs. Clinton would speak at the church down the street from Mr. Obama and accept a civil-rights award on her husband’s behalf. On Feb. 28, a Washington Post–ABC News poll showed her lead evaporating among black voters. The following day, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign announced in a statement that she would “join President Clinton” as he accepted the award.

But on Sunday, as fans swarmed around Mr. Clinton, grasping at his hands and kissing his reddened cheeks, he told The Observer that he had committed to attend the commemoration right away—“as soon as I found out I was invited and they wanted to give me this award,” he said.

On Monday, Mrs. Clinton told Radio Iowa, “We were both invited—I to participate and he to receive the Voting Rights Hall of Fame honor—and originally he didn’t know if he could rearrange his schedule.”

Mrs. Clinton then added, “It worked out for us to be there together, and I’m glad it did.”

FOR BOTH CANDIDATES, IT WAS A WEEKEND rife with political maneuvering and posturing. Mr. Obama scored the point of sitting next to Mr. Lewis in the church, but Hillary held his hand during the march.

According to a briefing paper circulated among staffers of Mr. Clinton, the candidates intended to flank Mr. Lewis, with Mr. Obama on his right and Mrs. Clinton and then her husband on the honoree’s left. But the pandemonium surrounding the candidates rendered futile any attempt at political choreography.

Mr. Obama ended up six or, at times, eight bodies down the line from Mr. Lewis. Mrs. Clinton’s practiced press operation sensed an advantage and pounced. An aide grabbed photographers backtracking in front of the marchers and smuggled them forward, past the protesting security, so that they could get better pictures of the Clintons next to Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Obama’s press officers scrambled to get photographers to the other side of the line, and one of them actually complained at one point that Mrs. Clinton’s camp was stealing their press.

Mr. Obama, on the other hand, seemed to take it all in stride. As the marchers paused before turning left on Broad Street toward the bridge, he took off his jacket, popped a piece of Nicorette gum in his mouth and happily accepted a wheelchair carrying civil-rights pioneer Fred Shuttlesworth. He then pushed it, smiling widely, to the foot of the bridge.

Once across the Alabama River, the candidates climbed atop a small, tree-shaded stage, where organizers planned to honor Mr. Clinton with his award.

After a few minutes of standing around, Mr. Obama said his goodbyes to the dignitaries, including a quick embrace with Mr. Clinton. The pair indulged the delighted crowd with a wave and then somewhat guiltily dropped their arms off each other’s shoulders. Before Mr. Obama made his way offstage, Reverend Joseph Lowery, a founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and an Obama supporter, asked everyone to stop what they were doing and close their eyes as he gave a benediction.

A few seconds in, the prayer took a somewhat uncomfortable political turn for Mrs. Clinton.

“We want to support the troops, and we know the best way to support the troops is to bring them home right now,” Mr. Lowery said. “We don’t need any long-drawn-out, structured plan. The plan is to bring them home.”

In the back corner of the stage next to the steps, Mr. Obama—perhaps not coincidentally—started to chuckle.

Assessing their performances in Selma this weekend, Lewis said that both candidates convinced him of their civil rights chops, but, for the moment, neither is getting his endorsement.

Obama's enthusiastic reception by the largely black audiences this weekend, Lewis said, "tends to demonstrate more than ever before that he can, and did, relate deeply and strongly with the African American community, I think he made it very clear in his message at Brown Chapel A.M.E Church, he said in effect that without the civil rights movement and without the march 42 years ago that he wouldn't be where he is."

But he also said that Bill Clinton would continue to be a unique asset for Hillary in appealing to African-American voters.

"President Clinton is so well liked among a large segment of the American population but especially among African-Americans. There was somebody who hollered out at the foot of the bridge, 'I wish you could run again, Mr. President.' I hear that all the time when I'm around him," Lewis said. "Without any question, I think he is a tremendous asset to his wife. She is a beneficiary of the strong and positive standing of his in the African-American community."

Lewis denied a suggestion in Sunday's Times story that he had held off from endorsing Obama before this weekend because of a call from Bill Clinton.

"He never suggested to me that I should hold off," said Lewis. "He never, ever -- he just called me and had a very friendly chat about what was going on, and we talked about a little of everything."

Lewis said that when Clinton called, he had no intention of supporting either candidate.

"If I was going to endorse someone I wouldn't pick last weekend to do it," he said, adding, "It is very early and I will not publicly endorse anyone this early. It could be the end of this year and it could be of the beginning this year. I like them both. I like Mr. Obama but I also like Mrs. Clinton. They are both good and different."

Lewis, who was severely beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge during the 1965 crossing, said that besides the obvious political overtones the candidates brought to the commemoration, Obama and Clinton's attendance signified something far more historic than just an intensifying campaign.

"More than anything else, 42 years later, to have an African-American and woman as the leading two contenders for the nomination is unheard of," said Lewis, adding that, along with Bill Richardson, a candidate of Hispanic origin, the 2008 election showed that "America had moved to the point where you could have three people from a group that wasn't even being considered just a few short years ago."

--Jason Horowitz

Although some have speculated that the song is a commentary on that chrome-domed celebrity of more recent vintage, Moby, I want to believe that Mr. Malkmus includes this as a comment on the dissolution of his band Pavement, for which he wrote songs, sang

and played guitar. A kind of vanity suffused Pavement's 10-year run. Though the ebullience and wit of Mr. Malkmus' uncommonly strong songwriting tended to burn through the shoddy production values that marked each of Pavement's albums, hearing these songs performed live was usually a lost cause. Pavement was a band that took perverse pride in giving criminally indifferent concerts.

Three of the four times I saw the band live, I could not believe how terrible they were. Ostensibly, this was due to the fact that the members of Pavement lived all over the country and couldn't effectively rehearse as a unit. But I suspect it was really because Pavement's sophomoric, elitist fans were fetishizing and rewarding the band for sucking live. Pavement concerts essentially became gigantic inside jokes that were indecipherable to those unacquainted with the codes of indie culture.

By the time of 1999's Terror Twilight , the band's immensely dreary last record, it seemed that Mr. Malkmus and Co. couldn't even get it up for the recording studio. A London date on the final Pavement tour found Mr. Malkmus brandishing a pair of handcuffs onstage and saying: "This is what it's like to be in a band." A storied trickster like him should have been able to come up with something more original.

So it's a distinct pleasure to report that Mr. Malkmus has overcome his twilight of terror and regained the spirit that had deserted him. Stephen Malkmus (Matador) is not, as the album's namesake has suggested, basically another Pavement record. It is an album that swaggers with a confidence and verve that used to be verboten in the field in which Mr. Malkmus was once the standard bearer.

The downside of Pavement's landmark 1992 album Slanted and Enchanted was that it inspired countless indie bands to adopt a similarly smart-assed slacker attitude toward recording. They, too, thought that they could become indie rock gods by noodling around with their instruments and stringing together a sing-songy collection of obscure references and non sequiturs over the sloppy sound.

They forgot one thing. The "proficiency vs. inspired amateurism" debate may have been useful in the days when Pink Floyd shared the earth with the Sex Pistols, but the triflers ultimately lost. And those bands that never developed a cohesive sound ended up playing footsie with their natural constituency when they should have been attempting to reach new listeners.

For them, Stephen Malkmus should be a bracing wake-up call. Mr. Malkmus has not broken entirely with his old slacker habits, but he takes giant leaps toward something more satisfying, something not wholly in thrall to those enabling fans who just want him to toss off smarty-pants witticisms and loaf musically.

Mr. Malkmus' band, the Jicks, is more fluid, nimble and versatile than the Pavement of 1999, all the better for Mr. Malkmus to flutter and trill via his often deliciously overdriven guitar solos. (His debt to Tom Verlaine has never been more clear than on the opening track, "Black Book".) As with all guitar music, your band's no good if the drummer ain't cookin'. And Mr. Malkmus' drummer, John Moen, knows how to swing, something that Pavement's merely steady beatmaster, Steve West, never quite managed.

The tunes on Stephen Malkmus , like the jaunty "Phantasies" and the almost straight boogie "Discretion Grove," are so tightly constructed and full of melodic thrills that the aphorisms and riddles he uses as lyrics sound once again playful and not tedious.

What's even more telling is that Mr. Malkmus doesn't intentionally obscure the meanings of his songs. He said once that it was easier to come up with goofy, jokey lyrics, since otherwise, meaningful sentiments would become meaningless after having to sing them over and over. But Mr. Malkmus understandably breaks his own rule on "Church on White," the lovely, waltz-time elegy for his friend Robert Bingham, author of Pure Slaughter Value , who died of a drug overdose in November 1999. As a delicate guitar lattice-work frames the tune, Mr. Malkmus sings, "All you really wanted was everything, plus everything / In truth, I only poured you half a life," bidding his pal goodbye in a manner that the unsentimental Bingham probably would have appreciated.

Then "The Hook" takes a left turn back into lighthearted territory: Mr. Moen taps out a cowbell-led groove as Mr. Malkmus spins a yarn about a teenager kidnapped by pirates who becomes their mascot, then captain of the galleon. Eventually he dubs himself "Poseidon's New Son" and thrills at the prospect of meeting Cap'n Hook. Somewhere in there, Mr. Malkmus lets fly a finely sculpted, in-the-pocket solo that only enhances the giddiness of this goofy story.

"The Hook" clearly was influenced by that neglected cinematic marvel, Cabin Boy , while "Jo Jo's Jacket" posits that Yul Brynner's finest moment was not The Magnificent Seven or The Ten Commandments but, to wit: "Perhaps you saw me in Westworld / I acted like a robotic cowboy / It was my best role / I cannot deny."

As fanciful as his subject matter is, it's an enormous pleasure to hear Mr. Malkmus sit back, pick at his guitar and sing about some topics that don't require a decoder ring to understand. In the sinuous idyll "Trojan Curfew," he describes the gods looking down on the Trojan War with the same mixture of affection and jealousy that Ray Davies lavished on Terence Stamp and Julie Christie in "Waterloo Sunset."

Speaking of sunsets, on Jan. 25, Mr. Malkmus played the first show of his first tour with the Jicks at the Bowery Ballroom, and it was obvious that the indie-rock era of slackness and snobbery had come to a close. After an opening set by a pick-up band of Matador employees and a record dealer that played Stones- and Stooges-influenced rock, Mr. Malkmus hit the stage around 11 p.m.

Looking every bit as dishy as his Hawaiian-sunset-hued visage on the album cover (now that's the kind of vanity you can use!), Mr. Malkmus and the Jicks ran through their set, which consisted largely of songs from the record and covers of songs by 80's Portland-area punks the Wipers, Australian hard-rockers Coloured Balls and Brit-folk standard bearers Fairport Convention and Mellow Candle. Though the band was not exactly as together as James Brown and his Famous Flames–Mr. Malkmus was occasionally halting and tentative–the Jicks were a damn sight tighter and certainly more exhilarating than any Pavement show I ever saw. If this is how indie rock grows up and gets its shit together, then long live indie rock.

–Rob Kemp

Lewis & Spark

One refutation of the Ken Burns-ian thesis that the only good jazz musician is a dead one (or else one named Marsalis) has emerged from an unlikely quarter: John Lewis, the pianist and leader of the Modern Jazz Quartet for some 40 years. At 80, Mr. Lewis is at an age when eternal repose and PBS canonization might seem to beckon. He has chosen instead to be reborn, first as a solo pianist on 1999's Evolution (Atlantic) and now as the improvisational center of a small ensemble on the follow-up, Evolution II (Atlantic). To top it off, the recorded sound on both albums is breathtakingly rich.

Mr. Lewis, it seemed, was a master of the art of self-effacement. Despite a couple of worthy and now mostly out-of-print solo albums, he was best known for his contrapuntal and sometimes overly tidy M.J.Q. compositions that served as showcases for vibist Milt Jackson's chops. Mr. Jackson's death a little over a year ago put the well-oiled quartet out of business forever and, in effect, invited Mr. Lewis to apply his understated pianism to a canvas that was all his own. The effect has been remarkable. On "One! of Parker's Moods," from the new album, he returns to the piano introduction he devised on the spot for the 1948 Charlie Parker gem "Parker's Mood" and spins out an entire tune's worth of variations. A fastidiousness about form–an M.J.Q. trademark–is on display here, but so is a lean bluesiness. Picture a tuxedo-clad Mr. Lewis working a juke joint, a single bead of sweat jumping off a golden cufflink.

In interviews, Mr. Lewis shrugs off any great indebtedness to Count Basie or Thelonious Monk (whose place he took in Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1946). Listeners, however, are free to hear echoes of the way Basie could bring you up short with a single, splanking note, or how Monk could blow your mind with nasty, dissonant minor seconds.

Where Mr. Lewis goes beyond his minimalist brethren is in orchestral sensibility (of course, Basie didn't need the sensibility–he had the orchestra). On an old M.J.Q. tune, "December, Remember," he develops a mournful solo for almost three minutes, then the band joins him for a lyrical blues with Howard Alden's strumming guitar somewhat redolent of Western swing. Mr. Lewis telescopes his long-form, Ellingtonian ambitions onto his small group most astoundingly in a new tune, "Cain and Abel." He sets up a walking blues (you can hear the implied vocal line so clearly, he might as well be striking syllables as notes) that alternates with abstract, concert-hall passages that finally resolve into a kind of jazz funeral march. Passion, tragedy and exile, all in contrasting sections that flow together without obvious segues: Martha Graham could have written a modern dance piece to go along with it.

Even when Mr. Lewis favors a sauntering pre-Tin Pan Alley sound, his arrangements are so unusual, and his deployment of musicians such as bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Lewis Nash is so sure, that the result is rarely, if ever, cloying. I couldn't say the same thing about the Modern Jazz Quartet, beloved institution that it was. Let the fortysomethings take note: At 80, Mr. Lewis has slyly composed his way out of the endgame of post-bop virtuosity.

–Joseph Hooper

A High for Low

The great majority of the music made by the Minnesota-based trio Low is soft, spare and simple, and moves at the speed of molasses. The structure of the group's songs can be obsessively repetitive, hanging on a single basic theme that's stated, restated and re -restated over several minutes. And whether singing separately or in hushed monastic harmony, the band's central husband-and-wife team of guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker leaves pauses between their melodic phrases that are acres wide–vast spaces often filled only by the rudimentary throb of Zak Sally's bass.

Low's music is the stuff that deep disagreements are made of. Some listeners find an unspeakable beauty and intensity in it; others view it as a healthier alternative to sleeping pills; and a few observers find its labored pace only slightly less excruciating than amputation without anesthetic. Being a skeptical music critic, I've frequently suspected that my opinion of the band ought to fall in one of the latter two categories, and when I've seen them live or heard their albums in the past, I've accordingly prepared myself for an agonizing, or soporific, experience. Instead, I've consistently been transfixed by the mesmerizing quality of this unassuming yet somehow overwhelming music. As much as I hate to admit it, I like Low. A lot.

If you're unfamiliar with the band's work, their latest album, Things We Lost in the Fire (Kranky), is a splendid introduction. I would humbly suggest that it's the best record they've made in their eight-year career. Not that it's some great leap forward. Two songs, "Dinosaur Act" and "Whore," pack a heavier punch than usual with the use of distorted bass and guitar, and two others, "Like A Forest" and "In Metal," could almost pass for upbeat pop songs (until you listen closely to the ambivalent lyrics). But on the whole, Things We Lost simply offers more of the intimate, quietly dramatic balladeering that Low has made its specialty.

What makes this album better than its predecessors is that Mr. Sparhawk, Ms. Parker and Mr. Sally have reached the point where the delicate interplay between words, music and performance has become second nature to them. At its finest, the result of this artistic maturation is a kind of sound painting. On "Laser Beam," Ms. Parker–whose voice could never be characterized as happy–adopts a weary tone that makes her sound like the loneliest woman in the world. For the song's key line, "I need your grace alone," she stretches the last word to the breaking point, coupled with a nine-note melody that roams disconsolately from the top to the bottom of her vocal range. Grace is nearly forgotten, but being alone is ever present.

"Whitetail," an ominous dirge driven by a grindingly slow guitar-bass pulse and overlaid with rapid-brushed cymbal that bears no rhythmic relationship to the main beat, builds to a fearsome climax and then, just when explosion seems imminent, dwindles to a whisper. The song's closing words are "Closer, closer, never closer": What exactly is it that we've gotten so close to here? Love? Transcendence? A big rock moment? Whatever it is, the song's subdued conclusion suggests that it will permanently remain just beyond our grasp.

A few words should be spared for Low's producer, the semi-legendary Steve Albini. Although Mr. Albini has talked a lot in interviews about how he aims to capture the sound of a room on tape, the work he's done with high-profile artists such as Nirvana, P.J. Harvey and Bush is notable for a compressed sludginess that sounds like no room I've ever been in. But working with a more restrained group like Low, Mr. Albini's enhanced-reality approach succeeds . Things We Lost really does sound like a band playing together in a big warm room, with everyone at the perfect volume level. Hints of organ, piano, Mellotron, strings and brass on several tracks add to the depth.

Still, the main focus of Things We Lost is the manner in which beauty and ambiguity co-exist in each song. The stories Mr. Sparhawk and Ms. Parker tell here have even bigger gaps in them than the melodies. "Medicine Magazines" may be about a friend or family member suffering from depression or terminal illness, or both–or maybe not. "Sunflower" refers to a dead body and ransom money, but loses its narrative thread in a haze of non sequiturs. Elsewhere, lines about being "born without a stomach" and "crushing your skull with my warming embrace" can make a listener marvel at how something so pretty can also be so unsettling. Which, one might assume, is the underlying point of this masterful album.

–Mac Randall