Circus

The singer does double duty as a dance diva and brokenhearted balladeer. It's no easy feat, but when Spears shoves aside the tabloid trauma and hooks up with the right producers--on this album it's Guy Sigsworth, Danja, Dr. Luke and Max Martin--she is in a class of her own.

Trying to express her actual feelings, instead of inhabiting a fantasy, she leaves us looking for an authenticity and vulnerability that isn’t in her skill set.

The fistful of dance tunes are fashionably stern, saddled with ominous strut and anonymous throb. But Britney is a palpable presence here, a flesh-and-blood singer.

Circus is a saddening step back to her glossy yet unengaging "In the Zone" era, which is a shame.

If Circus had ended at eight songs, it would be a curveball pop classic but sadly--as with recent Beyonce, Alesha Dixon and Pussycat Dolls releases--the album bloats to twice that length.

Halfway through, Circus shifts from defiant booty calls to subtler material; suddenly, it's a first-rate electro-pop album.

It's too bad the best songs here don't really match up with her best performances, but that's nothing new for Spears.

Cynical vocodered mediocrity.

The cartoonish sound compensates for Spears' lack of range and lung power by allowing her to ham it up.

Obviously all is still not perfect in Britney's world, but Circus still does more than enough to remind us of why she's one of the world's most iconic pop stars.

Her voice--treated and autotuned to within an inch of its life throughout--still sounds like that of the Mouseketeer who brought us '...Baby One More Time’, with every breathy “Mmmm… yeah!” and all the oh-so-naughty lyrics, such as the ones above, sounding forced and unconvincing. Of course, on a large number of the tracks here she has the solidly cool-sounding (no doubt expensive) backdrop of futur’n’b pop.

Spears is immersed in an often trite, intensely narcissistic look at her existence, crafted almost entirely by songwriters other than herself. That’s not to say that some of the songs aren’t catchy or danceable, but they’re wasted on a singer who brings no real personality along for the ride.

Not everything hits the target, even with her hands gripped tightly around the controls, but she’s offered us something intermittently wonderful that proves she can still black us out even when she’s on the up and up.

"Blackout" seemed like it signaled a more club-orientated path for Spears, like Madonna or Kylie Minogue, but Circus is a hodgepodge of pop themes that never really finds a face.

The clubby, adventurous pop on her sixth album--her first since getting committed and losing custody of her kids--would have made a fine follow-up to 2003's In the Zone.

Wildly if transitorily enjoyable at turns, vacuous and ignorable at others, Circus doesn't quite feel like a comeback, but I'm sure Brit's not above merely bringing pre-comeback.

Circus is a top-rate pop album that, with a little bit of justice, will be afforded the same sort of longevity as her brilliant early singles.

For better or worse, Spears is, as she says on the title track, "a put-on-a-show type of girl," and when she sticks to that credo, Circus works.

Circus isn't bad as pop albums go, but whether by default or design, it's substantially less edgy and exciting than its predecessor.

Most of her new songs are crisp, cunning dance-pop with a touch of schoolyard singsong. Just before they grow mechanical, they’re zapped with new effects or catchy melodic interludes.