Music has always moved us. It has been our scenery, our high literature, our unfailing timepiece. It has invaded our politics, our prayers and our pastimes. Some albums have succeeded in tearing through the constricting walls of genre. Others have succeeded in wresting the last vestiges of marrow from the decaying, desiccated skeletons of generations lost. Some albums have been hailed as erudite achievements. Some have had noteworthy social impact. Some have goaded us onward through the grayest seasons of despair. Some have simply freed us to dance. So many of these have found a place to hang along the vaunted corridors of America's most ephemeral institution: celebrity. We have touted these albums as genius, as timeless and groundbreaking. Yet, have we ever encountered an album that we can sincerely label heroic?

Little over a year ago, Warren Zevon, whom many of us know as the wily social satirist who provided us with such '70s hits as "Werewolves of London" and "Lawyers, Guns, and Money," was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. After receiving the news, and against the better counsel of his doctors, Zevon pledged to provide his fans with one final album to cap a 33-year career in the recording industry. Given only six to 12 months to live, Zevon enlisted the help of quite a few well-established friends in the industry, including Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Don Henley, Dwight Yoakam and Ry Cooder, as well as Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen, with whom he had collaborated previously.

Zevon's album, aptly titled "The Wind," was released at the end of August, nearly a year after he was diagnosed. He died on Sept. 7th, less than two weeks later. As one might imagine, the album is replete with metaphors, allusions and symbols of death. Indeed, its working title, "Dirty Life and Times" (also the name of the album's opening track), suggests reflection, placing Zevon in a unique position of flux: a living man contemplating his life and pending death. In fact, this position enhances and mystifies lyrics that otherwise might be regarded as overly pedantic and generic. For example, in the bright-paced rocker "Numb as a Statue," Zevon writes, "I'm numb as a statue/ I may have to beg, borrow or steal/ Some feelings from you/ So I can have some feelings too." Sung by Uncle Kracker, I would be inclined to pass these lyrics off as cookie-cutter industry diarrhea propagated by the dumbing down of American culture. However, Zevon's unique angle adds interesting depth to some simple and otherwise intuitive assertions.

Perhaps the final moments of even a wildly emotive life are spent numb and unfeeling. If death's great tragedy is the end of emotion, perhaps it befalls us before our final hour, while we still have breath enough to speak it. Leo Tolstoy's masterpiece "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" asserts very much the opposite: that even the most unreflective careerist can be cast against a violent tide of emotion when faced with the prospect of mortality. If we can acknowledge that death stirs the winds of change, such that even the vapid man feels, we must also accept the opposite: that it may benumb the emotive man. Berate the album's occasional pedantry if you must, but embrace it as a unique, primary source account of life's ultimate mystery.

Moreover, do not presume that all of Zevon's lyrics are sterile and didactic. To the contrary, fine literary moments crop up throughout the album. For example, "The Wind's" eeriest track, "Prison Grove," relates Zevon's current condition of waiting for death to imprisonment. He sings, "An icy wind burns and scars/ Rushes in like a fallen star/ Through the narrow space/ Between these bars/ Looking down on Prison Grove." Here, he looks helplessly upon his mortal fate like a sinner stranded on the ebbing banks of the river Styx.

Yet, understand that you need not be in a macabre, brooding mood to appreciate "The Wind." While Zevon has departed from the hedonistic anthems of his earlier years, this is not a particularly depressing album. Instead, it is one which offers accessible lyrics combined with outstanding musicianship. Highlights include a sprawling guitar solo by Bruce Springsteen on the road-house rocker "Disorder in the House," Ry Cooder's lap-steel on the shadowy "Prison Grove," and the album's most affecting and final track, the recorded-at-home acoustic ballad "Keep Me in Your Heart." Also of note is Zevon's cover of the Bob Dylan classic "Knocking on Heaven's Door," to great effect. Yes, I realize that the world of music needs nothing less than another rendition of this oft-covered, always-bungled Dylan tune, yet Zevon's version invokes exceptional poignancy at the end, as, by way of chant, he implores, "open up, open up, open up for me."

Truth be told, Zevon's final album may not reassert the presence of meaningful music in the face of today's plundering marauders of pop, as did Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" almost 30 years ago. It may not venerate and impose the rowdy hordes of subculture upon a horrified, yet forever- changed mainstream, as did The Clash with raffish declarations of independence on their 1979 masterpiece "London Calling." It may not be played 35 years later like The Beatles' "white" album. In fact, "The Wind" may not even be played a year from now. Yet, Zevon's last-stand act of heroism should reaffirm for the new generation of songwriters the ultimate power of music, and most poignantly for the rest of us, the ultimate power of faith and devotion to what we believe in most.