Many of these songs are merely bemused, and when she revises "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good," all she achieves is a different singalong from the one you expected.

A little too decisively to instill much hope for his love life, the rowdy songs are deeper than the thoughtful ones.

A lot of the time he's trying too hard to say too little or trying too clumsily to say too much, sometimes even with his trusty guitar.

Finally we've reached a tipping point resembling the riot grrrl moment of the early '90s, one in which every feisty hip-hop soprano has a you-go-illygirl edge on her notebook-toting male competitors.

With four-on-the-floor dance music the nearest the actually popular pop world came to mindless rocking out in 2011, I only wish it had a few "I Gotta Feeling"s.

The surprise is that the attention requires so little effort, because there's always a musical touch to keep you alert.

I give him extra credit for both preaching to the converted and doing his damnedest to rally the holier-than-thou.

Insofar as she pretends her willful pose is the holy truth, she's annoying. What saves that pose is the willful power of a presentation less Courtney Love or Chan Marshall than PJ Harvey.

Unlike Woody Guthrie, Williams is loved more for his singing than his lyrics, and boy does some of this retrofitted doggerel lack character as entuned and delivered.

He wants to set his people on the right path and keeps thinking up explicit ways to say so. But none of them have gotten near that goal so far, not even theoretically, as they might if his skills included the ability to rise to actual hits, as opposed to pleasurable musicality, and also to sink to them.

Give it up to the one where Beyonce pledges gangsta devotion and, best of all, the one where the "billionaire" (he says) looks back at the betrayals of his own departed head of family with something that feels like dread.

Struggling for cred as aging rappers will, they stumble occasionally. Some of these ideas obviously seemed funnier when they brainstormed them.

Like Illmatic it eschews pop emoluments, and conceptually it's just as canny.

The chirpy opener about fun in the sun is a feint‑-the lyrics that follow are so depressive that the consistent cheer and conservatism of the tunes is like some perverse minimalist art move.

Several [guest singers] distinguish themselves‑-SoKo all breathy, Lorraine nice and rough‑-as does (Tjinder) Singh, changing up the rhythms as he "milks" his usual tiny store of melody.

Given his limitations, his famous friends are a mixed benefit, because they show him up.

This is how the pleasure principle feels to an alienated unbeliever resigned to engaging the world on his own perverse terms.

What I get from the album as a whole isn't a feel for the fictional Redford Stephens. It's the pop refrains, Euro orchestrations, and simplified drumming absorbed by a sound that shows no sign of standing pat.

Almost every track offers up at least a snatch of melody you're always glad to hear again.

I find only the alcoholic's confession "Neon Cathedral" too much, and that one's counteracted by the relapser's confession "Starting Over," just as "Sayin' `That's poetry, it's so well-spoken,' stop it" counteracts his art talk. He's especially good on old cars and old clothes.

This Leeds-to-Cambridge foursome's unhurried electro-mesh is always more than pleasant and half the time mildly enthralling.

How much you admire this record will depend on how redolent you find two of them: the quiet jeremiad "Scarlet Town" and the quieter love-triangle cut-'em-up "Tin Angel.

As usual the songs come clear eventually.

Whether she's singing it for her penniless sisters or her affluent self is impossible to tell. That's why they call her provocative. Also, um, controversial.

He nails three [songs] flat-out....The rest tend more, how to say it, evocative.

Fun as it is to hear her do "Creep," "Teenagers," and "Smoke Two Joints," this is a bigger mess than it had to be.

The gears that never quite mesh in this disquieting but hardly apocalyptic industrial ambient may be metal and may be plastic but are probably both.

The poppers keep on coming right through the bonus tracks of porn-lite funk-lite that's quirky and clever front to back.