The subtle flutter of her finest melismatics could give an open-minded person goose bumps. Her coarser melismatics, however, are the usual showoff BS and probably also a commercial prerequisite, like not having a harelip.

It's touching on a human level. Noble, even. I didn't think he had it in him.

These nutty kids turned DOR nostalgia act make their first album in 16 years their sex album. Eeyew, say today's normal kids. 'Bout time, says anybody old enough to know that one lure of the flesh is that it's always decaying.

There are three good songs on this 11-track artifact, and deeply vapid though the split-personality bit is, the trick of dividing the album into two CDs does leave a 17-minute dance disc that can be played without gastric distress by any purchaser who isn't picky about diva gangstaism or videophone porn.

It's also the rare work of art that captures the dizzy infatuation that is dedicated infant care. All that's missing is a song about sleep deprivation.

Songs are his job, and his reserves are apparently inexhaustible.

Maybe this album is dumb on the surface, though not as much as fools claim. But sure as showbiz it isn't dumb underneath.

In which Eddie Argos of Art Brut (!) and Dyan Valdes of the Blood Arm (?) write second-cousin answer songs to, among others, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Kanye West, the Mamas and the Papas, Avril Lavigne, and P.D. "Creeque Allies" is a capsule history of the Maquis.

Eminem settles for sensationalism straight up, and, worse still, makes you wonder whether he ever truly knew the difference.

What the two boil down to is that a parvenu mastering pop music for money has turned into a made man running on vanity. I find that this renders his expert trivialization of murder and such rather less piquant, and I think he does too--that an audacious formal delight has become routine.

The emotion fueling her pretense is cathartic nevertheless.

Soused at the student union bar, licking Haagen-Dazs off her beau in literally filthy foreplay, she's weird and you're weird. That makes you mates.