Johnston, this drums-and-guitar duo has finally mastered the art of insulting our intelligence with sweetness and charm (esteemed critic Richard Meltzer decries all rock bands in the liner notes, naming the Bugs the “lone exception”). A sense of humor lurks beneath the handclapping, two-chord stomp of “Fuckin’ A Right,” in which the deadpanned phrase “Yeah, I fuckin’ know what you mean” ends each line. Yet the Bugs can also seem wistfully sage when they slow down and whine softer tunes, like “Stars & Stripes.” JASON SIMMS

Neptunes on Neptune. MIKAEL WOOD

Saroea and Ketil Mosnes bring a singularly warped exuberance to their double-entendre disco pop. On tracks about beastly divas and dancing with Daddy, they combine campy humor, hair-trigger club hooks, and electro-charged rock riffs. The rub, though, comes when the tempo drops—the album’s post-punk brooders tend to kill the buzz, even in their abundant irony. If only more tracks mirrored summer-crush anthem “Computer Camp Love,” which sets adolescent hearts thumping over Commodore 64 screens. JENNIFER MAERZ

Chemical Brothers We Are the Night ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Big-beat believers still get high on their own supply On 2005’s surprisingly still top-notch Push the Button, Chemical Brothers demonstrated that their ability to rock a block didn’t die with electronica’s 20th-century mainstream aspirations. Here, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons continue to smear psychedelic synth cheese and stereophonic airplane noises over chewy grooves that veer closer and closer to straight disco. Nü-rave hopefuls Klaxons give “All Rights Reversed” a trippy black-light menace, while “The Salmon Dance,” with rhyming by the Pharcyde’s Fatlip, could be the

Kelly Clarkson My December ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Evanescent breakup songs from a pugnacious Idol

Waging a public battle with label boss Clive Davis, Kelly Clarkson has become an unlikely symbol of artistic credibility (Davis has openly questioned My December ’s commercial appeal). And like Alanis and Avril before her, she is following a megahit with a self-written serious rock release—musically downbeat, emotionally tortured, and not Top 40–tailored. But even without a “Since U Been Gone,” Clarkson’s bleacher-reaching vocals and irrepressible pluck are hard to dislike. With this collection of frosty kiss-offs (“Never Again”), snarling disco rock (“ 1 Minute”), and unusually subdued ballads (“Irvine”), she cements her place as the pop figurehead for the overlooked and underappreciated teenage girl in all of us. MICHAEL ENDELMAN

Matthew Dear Asa Breed ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Maximal feelings from a minimal electronic phenom

Techno’s earthy cousin microhouse is generally as unassuming as its name, but Michigan-based producer Matthew Dear infuses the snapping, beeping compositions of his second album with a sincere yearn, broadening the genre in the process. Dear’s breathy, throaty voice has a stirring tunefulness that recalls TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe. Paired with downcast piano, guitar, and darkly funky rhythms, his enigmatic mantras and coded narratives (the album title nods to a Kurt Vonnegut character) deal in romantic desperation; but there’s strange hope when he finally exclaims, “I’ve got to figure out love!” J. GABRIEL BOYLAN

“Home, I have
no home—
hunted, despised.”

Datarock Datarock Datarock ITUNES MYSPACE Computer nerds who like to party (wink, wink, nudge)

With this Stateside debut, the Bergen, Norway duo of Fredrik

Siamese Scream

A battered alt-rock demigod comes out swinging

Smashing
Pumpkins
Zeitgeist ½
ITUNES MYSPACE

FROM LEF T: KNU T ASERUD/COUR TES Y NE T T WERK MUSIC GROUP; KELLY A. S WIF T/RE TNA

Datarock:
Norway in
tha heezy

Bryan Ferry Dylanesque ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Icon of world-weary chic knocks on heaven’s door—again

Arch, affected, and just a little bit sharp, Bryan Ferry’s singing was as shocking and influential in the 1970s as Bob Dylan’s visionary wheeze had been a decade earlier. When the Roxy Music frontman recorded the protest anthem “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” in 1973, the collision of style and content felt more like farce than tribute. But time has aged both singer and songs into handsome familiarity, and Ferry embraces these Dylan classics—one each from 11 albums, from 1962 to 1997—with undiluted sincerity, gently remodeling the barbed lyrics into graceful modern art. IRA ROBBINS

Forget that he’s estranged from original guitarist James Iha and bassist D’arcy—Billy Corgan was already bucking incredible odds when he announced that he was joining drummer Jimmy Chamberlin for a full-fledged Smashing Pumpkins “reunion.” After all, in the high-stakes world of rock revivals, it’s universally agreed that you should never record a new CD. Plan an overpriced arena tour, sure, but enter the studio and you’re setting the stage for a disaster.

Yet, with this blistering set of tunes, Corgan has somehow managed to create an album that doesn’t feel like a sad retread. Granted, there are a few missteps, mostly a handful of drab, synth-touched ballads. But otherwise, the first album under the Pumpkins name in seven years is filled with the

kind of tinnitus-inducing riffs
and fleet-fingered solos that
Corgan mastered when he
still had a full head of hair.

Throughout Zeitgeist, he’s fixated on the apocalypse, as evidenced by titles like “Doomsday Clock” and “ 7 Shades of Black.” Fortunately, though, his foot is firmly planted on the monitor in front of him as he tears through intense rockers like “Tarantula” and

With this blistering set of tunes, Corgan has somehow created an album that doesn’t feel like a sad retread.

ethereal guitarfests like “Bring the Light.” In the end, this is a loud, almost triumphant statement that finds the Pumpkins’ founder rediscovering his strengths after the failure of 2005’s low-key solo debut, The Future Embrace. That may not be enough to silence his critics, but for the time being, Corgan seems content with merely drowning them out. TREVOR KELLEY