Maroon 5
It Won’t Be Soon Before
Long ½
ITUNES MYSPACE

Grammy winners flash their eclectic chops, dirty minds When your first album sells four million copies, you’re bound to try to play out a few musical fantasies with the follow-up, and these modern-pop lotharios

are now dabbling in everything from nouveau disco to sleazy funk to big-band balladry. Such diversity suits them well, however, and the only misstep is frontman Adam Levine’s raunchy lyrics, which often examine the joy of knocking boots in such skin-crawling detail that even Prince might tell him to cool it. TREVOR KELLEY

Megadeth
United Abominations
½
ITUNES MYSPACE

Mustaine and Co. threaten to thrash the government Megadeth have never adapted their razor-edged shredding to straight-up arena rock as well as Metallica, and even their most ferocious ’80s efforts felt a little unre-

Drinking to
forget that
they drink

solved. The band has always
had a general political
awareness, but United
Abominations is Dave
Mustaine’s serious stab
at protest rock, and the
results are similarly mixed.
Bad pun aside, the title track
is a delightfully jagged slice
of aggro, while “Gears of
War” has a hint of anthemic
melodicism. Still, too many
of these overly blustery blasts
sound like entrance themes
for professional wrestlers.
KYLE ANDERSON

Ugly Beauty

Mystery Jets Zootime ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Father and son’s giddy racket wakes up the neighbors

Zoos haven’t been cool since Paul Simon called giraffes “insincere” in the late ’60s, yet Mystery Jets make a helluva case for them on this British family band’s debut album. In fact, somewhere between the first and 85th time they scream “Zootime!” in the title track, they whip up a raucous mess of thudding bass drum, Exocet guitar screech, and glorious exuberance. When that energy peaks, with the intricate tempos of “The Boy Who Ran Away” and the Pink Floyd– skimming “Horse Drawn Cart,” the group’s scuzzy rock is irresistible. And though their bids for introspective gravitas are too ironic, there’s enough promise here to rattle more cages soon. STACEY K. ANDERSON

Rufus Wainwright: “Voulez-vous
coucher avec moi, bitches!”
Withering stories of an empire in magnificent decline

The National Boxer ITUNES MYSPACE

Since 1999, this Brooklyn-via-Cincinnati quintet has been trying to fuse poetic lyrics, cinematic pull, and nervy, restless rock in a singular way. And on their fourth album, they finally fulfill those ambitions, adding brass, piano, and backup singers to unveil high drama of the blunt, unclichéd sort unheard since the Afghan Whigs’ ’90s heyday.

Yet the National don’t
just reconvene Greg Dulli’s
sweaty seminars on sex

and soul. Boxer opens with Matt Berninger’s sweeping baritone, recounting life in a privacy-invading “Fake Empire,” where the oblivious and decadent “tiptoe through our shiny city with our diamond slippers on.” The lyrics’ immediacy

The National report
on an anguished
world of denial.

recalls 2004’s “Wasp Nest,” a stunning class commentary chronicling an obsession with a U.S. aristocrat in a decades-old cocktail dress. But here the rhythms accelerate as the album unfolds, and the horns grow taut, puncturing, even

slightly jazz-crazed. “Brainy,” about stalking someone with a “fancy, fancy mind,” and “Slow Show,” about missing someone you’ve never met, become darting, rhythmic workouts. And “Guest Room,” with its troubled couple retiring into suffocation, chamber-pops onto even grander, more mysterious terrain. “Sometimes you go la-di-da-di-da-di-da-da / Till your eyes roll back into your head,” Berninger explains in the operatic “Racing Like a Pro.” And that’s the anguished world of denial that the National report on. Horrible or magnificent, it’s all theirs. JAMES HUN TER

Joell Ortiz The Brick (Bodega Chronicles) ITUNES MYSPACE The best Latino rapper since Big Pun—and he crushes a lot

Joell Ortiz, the latest artist signed to Dr. Dre’s Aftermath imprint, is well aware of his niche. On “Hip Hop,” he raps, “I don’t try to make you dance / I rip beats.” And on this warm-up to his major-label debut, the spirited rapper breezes through four 125-bar epics—the average song contains 48. The coarse production (gritty keys, straight loops, little instrumentation) actually complements his husky vocals, but are three songs about his hometown (“BQE,” “Brooklyn Bullshit,” “Brooklyn [Remix]”) really necessary? THOMAS GOLIANOPOULOS

Page France Page France and the Family Telephone ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Surprisingly mature insights marred by childlike tics

Page France’s handcrafted folk pop pushes awfully hard to be quaint. Between the coy vocals of leader Michael Nau and some overly delicate playing—note the repeated use of bells—this Maryland quartet’s third album has a tendency to bog down in preciousness. That’s a shame, because Nau’s songs are more complex than they initially sound, smartly tackling all sorts of prickly grown-up situations. Anybody who sings “I lie so well / I start to buy it, too” is clearly no stranger to deeper, darker impulses. JON YOUNG

Sa-Ra Creative
Partners
The Hollywood
Recordings ½
ITUNES MYSPACE
Forward-thinking urban music
vets take a trip backward

This bicoastal progressive soul trio have been music industry players for more than a decade, so maybe it makes sense that their debut

FROM LEF T: ABBE Y DRUCKER/COUR TES Y BEGGARS BANQUE T; ELLIS PARRINDER/COURTES Y SACKS TCO