SOUNDCHECK

Justin Timberlake


FUTURESEX/LOVESOUNDS (3 stars)

The title, first of all, is all wrong. This does not sound like the future. The title track, in fact, sounds like something Michael Jackson could have written five minutes after finishing "Smooth Criminal." And despite what Justin Timberlake deeply desires, these are not songs for dirty, sweaty bedroom encounters. Single "SexyBack" is proof that Timberlake's been listening to a lot of Prince along with his King of Pop collection, but it's more of a playful come-on than an actual tryst. There's not enough of a beat for you to truly get down.

What makes this album work is that Timberlake has the skills and Rolodex to trick out every song in strange, delightful ways and take every song to strange, delightful places. Even stripped bare, Timberlake's music would still groove. But fully loaded, there are delicious levels of flavor.

"... What Goes Around ... Comes Around" starts off like Timberlake's trying to write a more dour theme song for Laguna Beach. Then, of course, he starts crying himself a river, and getting all personal in a way that might make even Chester Bennington scream Too Much Information. The meltdown's pretty cool.

"Chop Me Up," a collaboration with Timbaland and Three 6 Mafia, is one of the most unlikely crunk songs ever recorded, and not just because it mentions Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. The soprano and baritone moments in the chorus probably make even Boyz II Men jealous.

"Losing My Way," meanwhile, is proof that Timberlake is the one guy who can find the halfway point between Eminem and Bright Eyes. The song begins simply enough: "Hi, my name is Bob and I work at my job," before turning into an anti-drug public-service announcement that you actually don't mind listening to. It's cheesy enough to make many listeners crack up, but you have to wonder who was doing lines on the set of The Mickey Mouse Club.

YO LA TENGO


I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU AND I WILL BEAT YOUR ASS (3.5 stars)

"The Story of Yo La Tengo," the title of the 15th and final track on Yo La Tengo's latest disc, could have served as an excellent handle for the album as a whole. Really, anything would be superior to the snicker-once, then-commence-cringing of I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass, but "The Story of Yo La Tengo" seems a succinct way of nutshelling an LP that, well, succinctly nutshells the indie vets' eventful 20-year career.

Arriving on the heels of the two most narrowly focused efforts in the New Jersey trio's catalog, I Am Not Afraid of You sounds like the most varied, borrowing bits and bytes from each phase along that two-decade journey as if it were a best-of comp rather than a collection of all-new material. We get the mushrooming drone of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One ("Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind"), the lovey-dovey couple's therapy of And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out ("Sometimes I Don't Get You"), the haunting Georgia Hubley vocals of Painful ("I Feel Like Going Home"), the blithe jazz-pop of Summer Sun ("The Room Got Heavy"), the Ira Kaplan noise-guitar onsets of Electr-O-Pura ("The Story of Yo La Tengo"), the Nuggets homage of the band's trunk of live covers ("I Should Have Known Better") and even a dip into the sticky lo-fi sweetness of bassist James McNew's side project, Dump ("Black Flowers").

Though such ingredients lend themselves to slick future playlist construction, taken collectively it all makes for a rather jarring listening experience, hopscotching from one YLT sub-style to the next. Its multicolored charms might dazzle newcomers, but longtime listeners will feel as if they've looked into the same reflecting pool before, often with more luminous results.

John Mayer


Continuum (4 stars)

John Mayer can play the blues. I've seen and heard him do it on Austin City Limits. Eyes shut tight, Mayer bent strings and elicited blues arias out of his Stratocaster like some sort of GQ-groomed Duane Allman on TV's coolest music show. Each note punctuated with a different facial contortion, a sweat-drenched Mayer looked and sounded like he graduated with honors from the B.B. King School of Blues Guitar.

When you think about Mayer's pop-based fan base—a likely mix of frat boys and suburban SUV moms—it's hard not to think of Jon Landau's pronouncement in Rolling Stone decades ago, bashing Eric Clapton by calling him a "master of blues clichés." It's just as tempting to dismiss Mayer.

But you know what? There's hardly any originality left in the blues universe. Sometimes the blues can be raw, uncompromising and filled with jagged edges. Sometimes you can display it with subtle phrasing pillowed by lush, slick sounds.

On Mayer's third solo album, Continuum, the young singer-songwriter chose the latter delivery this time out. It doesn't mean he can't move you in the gut or below the belt.

Instead of Stevie Ray Vaughan show-offs, Mayer sits back inside each of his sleek R&B songs and drops cloudbursts of tone and technique.

Mayer isn't Clapton. He is just a blues player who knows how to mix the grit with the gloss.

Junior Boys


So This is Goodbye (2.5 stars)

It would be too simple to call the second album from Hamilton, Ontario's Junior Boys a mere homage to classic synth-pop. It is less the sound of "harking back" to a particular era than the sound of time stopped dead in its tracks in 1982; less a case of hero-worshipping at the altar of Soft Cell and Visage than an acknowledgment, or rather, an insistence, that they are contemporaries. Not to suggest that this back-to-the-future theory is some cannily crafted ploy on the Boys' behalf—in fact, it's the taken-for-grantedness of the gesture that actually makes it convincing.

This is all very nifty, but there are still, at the end of the session, 10 tunes to contend with here, and though a few songs are catchy enough ("FM," "The Equalizer" and "In the Morning" have me shaking my little pinky, if not my hips), and though I like the incessant synthetic throb that underlines their sound, their music is nonetheless remarkably bereft of personality. Vocalist Jeremy Greenspan puts everything over with a brooding, hushed sexiness. You may hear it and swoon the night away. Me, I can't help shake the impression that his endless (er, careless?) whisper is a cover-up for his inability to carry a proper tune.

Mastodon


Blood Mountain (2.5 stars)

I'm not quite sure why Mastodon has so wowed the highbrow rock critics, but I have a feeling it might be that those critics don't actually like heavy metal, and Mastodon sounds like a metal band that has contempt for the genre. The relentlessly acclaimed Atlanta foursome make their major-label debut with Blood Mountain, which ranks among the least-accessible rock albums released by a major label in years.

It's still a stylistic evolution for the group, though, which means that this time around singer Brent Hinds is occasionally intelligible, and some tracks even approach something resembling traditional songs. It's probably enough for some of the group's most ardent fans to cry sell-out, but it's still far from listenable, music to be admired rather than enjoyed. And what, exactly, is admirable here? The fantasy-epic lyrics, delivered probably ironically, are already a cliché of hipster metal bands like High on Fire. The crazy time signatures and meandering structures only make the tracks blend together into one loud, incoherent mush. Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme and The Mars Volta's Cedric Bixler-Zavala make guest appearances, but good luck picking them out of the sludge.

When the band calms down and focuses on one or two thoughts in a track, the result can be interesting; "Colony of Birchmen" is almost straightforward and has a memorable riff or two while remaining experimental. But the track right before it, "Bladecatcher," is three minutes of cacophonous, indistinguishable arty noise. Which, for many critics, is probably preferable to an actual heavy metal song.

Ferry Corsten


L.E.F. (3 stars)

Standing for "Loud, Electronic, Ferocious," L.E.F. is trance DJ and producer Ferry Corsten's second artist album under his own name. But don't let the trance nomenclature scare you; the album has enough beats and rhythms to keep your feet moving. In fact, if you were hoping for a pure trance album from the Dutchman, prepare to be disappointed, as at least half the tracks have more of a house or techno feel.

"Fire," the lead single, samples Duran Duran's Simon LeBon, his high tones giving the track the right amount of grounding—you don't just bop along to the music without hearing it. That's soon followed by "Into the Dark," with Howard Jones providing a much more substantial contribution.

It's really not until you hit the sixth of 16 tracks, "Galaxia," a remake of a tune that first surfaced 10 years ago, that Corsten immerses himself in trance, serving up a rich song with bits of techno sound effects that elsewhere often sound as dated as "Galaxia." It's the beginning of a great flow, moving through the next three tracks to "Possession," where vocals once again come into play. This time, it's Denise Stahlie, who delivers a haunting performance.

L.E.F., with its title and accompanying cover art showing Corsten walking away from an exploding race car, doesn't quite live up to its own billing. Electronic? Yes. Loud and ferocious? Not quite. But there's enough here for Corsten to avoid being called tame.