SUGARLAND Love on the Inside -- Deluxe Fan Edition Mercury Nashville ½ Jennifer Nettles' in-your-face performing style is akin to the sensation of diving into a chilly swimming pool. Even if you know what to expect, her nasal twang still feels like a full-body slap. Thing is, she's got a terrific voice once you get used to it.
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VARIOUS ARTISTS Mamma Mia! -- The Movie Soundtrack Decca ABBA's music is so infectious that it can make a musical plot in which beautiful people live on an even more beautiful Greek isle and just break out into ABBA songs instead of normal conversation like ''Pass the tanning oil, please'' seem perfectly natural.
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DANCE HERCULES AND LOVE AFFAIR Hercules and Love Affair Mute ½ Disco will never die -- it just keeps reinventing itself.
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RAY SCOTT Crazy Like Me Jethropolitan Records You won't hear '70s-styled Outlaw country on mainstream radio. But thanks to the growth of online music sites, edgier, more interesting artists like Ray Scott and Jamey Johnson are free to make country music that harkens back to the Outlaw style popularized by rabble-rousing icons like Waylon Jennings. (Johnson's impressive Jennings-styled song cycle That Lonesome Song is out Aug. 5 on Mercury Nashville but don't expect pop-oriented radio to support it...
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JOURNEY Revelation Nomota LLC The revelation of Journey's new album and lineup is not that this is the best Journey album in 25 years or that the San Francisco band found its new lead singer via YouTube.
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POP COLDPLAY Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends 5 Capitol ½ At first listen to Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, Coldplay's fourth studio album, you might wonder: What is wrong with Chris Martin?
Chicago, Stone of Sisyphus (XXXII) (Rhino Records). Originally recorded in 1993. Coldplay, Viva La Vida (Capitol).
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AIMEE MANN @#%&*! Smilers SuperEgo Records Aimee Mann will forever reside in '80s lore for singing the hit Voices Carry for her band 'Til Tuesday. But her true career-defining moment would come more than a decade later when she parlayed a friendship with Magnolia director Paul Thomas Anderson into contributing eight haunting songs to the film's soundtrack, including the Oscar- and Grammy-nominated Save Me. (Anderson was so enamored of Mann's songs that he actually used her lyrics to inspire the...
Adele, 19 (Sony). Up-and-coming British soul singer is hailed as one of ''the new Amys'' (as in Winehouse), hopefully minus the self-destructive tendencies.
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USHER Here I Stand LaFace Records ½ The first third of Usher's new album, Here I Stand, spurs concerns that he has lost his magic touch. As on his previous albums, the R&B hitmaker called on hip-hop's elite for help, recruiting Young Jeezy, will.i.am, Jay-Z and his wife Beyoncé and Lil' Wayne.
Ashanti, The Declaration (Universal Motown). Features first single The Way That I Love. Disturbed, Indestructible (Warner Bros.).
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BACH: The Art of Fugue Pierre-Laurent Aimard Deutsche Grammophon ½ BACH: Fugues Emerson String Quartet Deutsche Grammophon. These two releases from the yellow label offer a complementary pair of discs exploring Johann Sebastian Bach's fugues.
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JORGE VILLAMIZAR Jorge Villamizar Warner Music Latina Quietly heartbreaking, sharply humorous and ultimately, surprisingly hopeful, Jorge Villamizar's solo debut is the most personal music he has made.
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POP DUFFY Rockferry Mercury/Rough Trade ½ Welsh singer-songwriter Duffy, 23, will earn plenty of comparisons to Amy Winehouse for her debut CD, Rockferry, but here's hoping that doesn't brand this former waitress a knockoff.
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POP CLAY AIKEN On My Way Here RCA/19 Clay Aiken has a message for his Claymates, that odd cult following that maintains an obsessional devotion for the singer. On The Real Me, written by Natalie Grant, the American Idol runner-up sings, ``I'm tired of the song and dance / Living a charade / Always on parade / What a mess I've made of my existence / But you love me even now.''
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NEIL DIAMOND Home Before Dark Columbia ½ If 12 Songs, Neil Diamond's striking 2005 collaboration with producer Rick Rubin, renewed your love of Diamond's songwriting, the pair's follow-up, Home Before Dark (out Tuesday) is a must-have.
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MADONNA Hard Candy Warner Bros. Once again, Madonna has reinvented herself. On Hard Candy, her 11th studio album and swan song on longtime label Warner Bros., the Queen of Pop veers toward hip-hop by recruiting ubiquitous producers Timbaland and Pharrell Williams. But fans who might wince at the thought of Madonna relinquishing control can relax -- the results sound surprisingly natural, not forced attempts to cash in on the latest trend.
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ASHLEE SIMPSON Bittersweet World Geffen Records ½ Ashlee Simpson has become a tabloid darling for dating Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz, getting caught lip-syncing her hit Pieces of Me on Saturday Night Live, and, of course, for simply being Jessica Simpson's little sis (she even recorded a song, Shadow, detailing her bitterness over Jessica stealing most of the limelight).
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OSCAR G Innov8 Nervous Records ½ Miami DJ Oscar G is perhaps best known for energizing the dance floors of the world's biggest nightclubs, including downtown's Club Space. But he's also a prolific producer, having a hand in anthems, including Funky Green Dogs' Fired Up and Dark Beat by Murk (his partnership with Ralph Falcon).
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MARIAH CAREY E=MC² Island After bizarre meltdowns and questionable career choices early in this decade, Mariah Carey came back with a bang in 2005 with her album The Emancipation of Mimi, which gave us the hits Shake It Off, Don't Forget About Us and We Belong Together. Now, the songbird proves her comeback was no fluke with E=MC².
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R.E.M. Accelerate Warner Bros. Accelerate, R.E.M.'s first studio album in four years, is being widely hailed as a return to the seminal college-rock band's roots, with its punchy, stripped-down guitars and renewed musical focus.
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THE B-52'S Funplex Astralwerks When the B-52's turned Saturday Night Live upside down in 1979 with its performance of the gleefully absurd Rock Lobster, it was immediately apparent we were witnessing something completely original in the pop music world.
HIP-HOP FLO RIDA Mail on Sundays Poe Boy/Atlantic ½ Carol City homeboy Flo Rida is one of the biggest success stories in the pop world this year, with his hit Low featuring T-Pain topping the Billboard Hot 100 for 11 consecutive weeks. The track has become so well-known that the release of Flo Rida's full-length debut album doesn't feel new.
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POP-ROCK LENNY KRAVITZ It Is Time For a Love Revolution Virgin Records ½ Lenny Kravitz has long been ripped by detractors for his brand of derivative retro-rock that blends Lennon-like, all-you-need-is-love idealism with arena-filling guitar riffs. And though there's a kernel of truth to the criticisms, they're largely unfair, as many of Kravitz's tunes -- such as Let Love Rule, Are You Gonna Go My Way?, Mama Said and Fly Away -- still sound fresh and genuine, especially in concert.
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SHERYL CROW Detours A&M Even though she says she was joking at that global warming discussion at the White House correspondents' dinner, the one where she suggested we limit ourselves to one sheet of toilet paper for environmental reasons, the comment still gained traction. There has always been a bit of the airhead in Sheryl Crow's music and wispy vocal delivery. She set that stage with the featherweight pop of her first big hit, All I Wanna Do, from her 1993 Grammy-winning Tuesday Night Music...
