Back To The Egg [Columbia, 1979]
Whew. Sixteen titles on an untimed LP that must run forty minutes if not fifty--or seventy-five. When he's on, Paulie's abundant tunefulness passes for generosity. Here he's just hoping something will stick. C

Chuck Mangione

Meltdown [1970s]

LL Cool J: Bigger and Deffer [Def Jam, 1987]
Like the pop-metal egotists he resembles every which way but white, J proves that there's something worse than a middle-class adolescent who's gotta be a big shot this instant--the same adolescent the instant he becomes a big shot. Overrated though it was, the debut had guts, spritz, musical integrity, and Rick Rubin. Breakthrough though it may be, the follow-up has a swelled head, a swollen dick, received beats, and quotes from Berry, Brown, and the Moonglows that confuse me. Could it be that the planet existed before he brought it to fruition? C+

Boys Don't Cry [PVC, 1980]
The sound is dry postpunk, with touches of Wire's spare, arty melodicism, more Pink Flag than 154. Never pretty, it's treated with a properly mnemonic pop overlay--scan the titles and you'll recall a phrase from all but a few of these thirteen songs. Intelligent phrases they are, too. Yet what are we to think of a band whose best song is based on Albert Camus's "The Stranger", a book that was holy writ for collegiate existentialists before Robert Smith was even born? The last thing we need is collegiate existentialism nostalgia. B+

Brand New Eyes [Fueled by Ramen, 2009]
Hayley, girl, it's ok to rock out, it's ok to agonize sometimes, but you really don't have to scream so much ("Careful", "Ignorance") *

Hot [Big Tree, 1977]
Vocally, this group can't match the Emotions, and the music for some of these songs is undistinguished, but I'll take their hit ("Angel in Your Arms," not to be confused with "Undercover Angel") for its modestly articulate modern moralism, a virtue many of the lyrics here share. Recommended: "Mama's Girl," "You Can Do It." B

Living in the Material World [Apple, 1973]
If you call this living. Harrison sings as if he's doing sitar impressions, and four different people, including a little man in my head who I never noticed before, have expressed intense gratitude when I turned the damned thing off during "Be Here Now." Inspirational sentiment: "the leaders of nations/They're acting like big girls." C

Shakedown Street [Arista, 1978]
The title cut is the first anthem any of these rabble-rousing necromancers have come up with in many a moon. But even there Jerry Garcia warns against "too much too quickly" and this album ain't the miracle they need. B-

Back in the U.S.A. [Capitol, 2002]
The sweeping gestures and broad arena rock of expert nonentities robs the Beatle songs that adorn this tour merch of all their precision and power. Yet the Beatle songs still dwarf the proofs of his solo existence, which gets lamer the older he gets. Still, his winsome smile and cloying stage banter are irresistable. And when he whips up some "First the gals, now the fellas" during the chorus of "Hey Jude", it is to cringe with dismay at the survival of a generation. C

Glow [Gordy, 1985]
Rick James was never Mister I.Q. to begin with but this record is so stupid--not just stupid but stoopid. All of which makes his continuing failure to conquer MTV all the more bewildering since between his dance moves, fop coiffure, and relentless sexual self-aggrandizement that's clearly where he belongs--he may be smarmier than Billy Idol but hey, what's a little grease among professionals? C

Britney [Jive, 2001]
hardly the first not-terribly-bright teenager to approach self-knowledge via the words of others ("Overprotected," "Cinderella") **

The Diary of Alicia Keys [J, 2003] *bomb*

Mariah Carey [Columbia, 1990]
I swear I didn't know her mama was an opera singer but then I'm embarrassed I didn't guess. She gets too political in her brave young attack on war and destitution ("There's gotta be a way/To unite this human race/And together we'll bring about a change.") Elsewhere she sticks to what she doesn't know--love. Debbie Gibson come back, all is forgiven. C

SMiLE [Nonesuch, 2004]
There are many things I don't miss about the '60s, including long hair, LSD, revolutionary rhetoric, and folkies playing drums. But the affluent optimism that preceded and then secretly pervaded the decade's apocalyptic alienation is a lost treasure of a time when capitalism had so much slack in it that there was no pressing need to stop your mind from wandering. Brian Wilson grokked surfing because it embodied that optimism, and though I considered the legend of Smile hot air back then, this re-creation proves he had plenty more to make of it. The five titles played for minimalist whimsy on Smiley Smile mean even more orchestrated, and the newly released fragments are as strong as the whole songs they tie together. Smile's post-adolescent utopia isn't disfigured by Brian's thickened, soured 62-year-old voice. It's ennobled--the material limitations of its sunny artifice and pretentious tomfoolery acknowledged and joyfully engaged. This can only be tonic for Americans long since browbeaten into lowering their expectations by the rich men who are stealing their money. A+