The quintessential post-rock band was a quintet from Chicago called Tortoise. They were post-rock because they didn’t have a singer, because their members swapped instruments frequently (meaning no one had a set role in the group), and because their music was wildly experimental yet still accessible. Their best album, Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996), opened with a 21-minute suite, “Djed,” that made reference to everything from cool jazz and dub reggae to minimalist composition and Indonesian gamelan ensembles; midway through, the piece dissolved in a burst of tape distortion, then recongealed with a completely different theme. All very pretentious—and all very exciting.

The new genre didn’t have much of a shelf life: By the turn of the century, most of the “post-rock” bands were fading into oblivion. Tortoise, however, continued to record and perform, cheered on by a small cult audience. Unfortunately, their latest release, A Lazarus Taxon (Thrill Jockey), a three-CD, one-DVD boxed set that looks back to the band’s 15-year career, is unlikely to expand their popularity. Any truly effective sampler of Tortoise’s output would have to include highlights from their six albums, but that’s not the case with this set, which is made up mainly of various B-sides, EP tracks and remixes, many of which have been out of print for years. (Hence the title: A Lazarus taxon is a paleontological term referring to life forms that vanish from the fossil record for long periods only to reappear later, like Lazarus rising from the dead.)

The box starts off well with “Gamera,” from 1995, which begins with a jaunty, folk-like acoustic guitar figure, morphs into a high-octane jam over an ominous drone and finally, more than 11 minutes later, fades out with a hiss of backwards percussion. The band’s sense of pacing is exemplary here; whenever bassist Doug McCombs switches to another note, it feels like a tectonic shift. But as the set progresses, the going gets tougher, peaking in difficulty with a remix of the 1994 track “Cornpone Brunch.” In its original version on Tortoise’s eponymous debut album, the song was a thrilling rush of power chords and frantic drum rolls; the remix, by Mike Watt of the great 1980’s band the Minutemen, submerges these positive features beneath what sounds like 20 additional bass parts. The truth is that only committed fans will want to hear most of these tracks more than once.

Worse, the whole package has an air of artsy superiority. Black-and-white photos of traffic accidents by the Swiss photographer Arnold Odermatt adorn the covers of the four separate discs and the box itself, as if to say, “Gee, isn’t modern society messed up?” Not exactly a novel observation. And the liner notes by Alan Licht, though clear overall, push the great-cultural-significance angle a little too hard. “[T]he fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War,” Mr. Licht claims, “set the stage for a new interest … in free musics (free jazz, free improvisation) but also for dub and remixing.” Just how the opening of Checkpoint Charlie affected the decision to record a song in Chicago featuring two vibraphones—a Tortoise trademark—is unclear to me.

When I first heard Tortoise in the mid-90’s, I didn’t think of them as any kind of rock band, post- or otherwise, but as a new kind of fusion group—one of the few to actually follow the aesthetic lead that Miles Davis took on his late-60’s and early-70’s albums, the most famous being In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. For the past 30 years, fusion has been the subgenre that dares not speak its name, due to the fact that many of Davis’ protégés turned it into a platform for the soulless display of chops. But Miles and his producer, Teo Macero, had something very different in mind: Their goal wasn’t to wow people with flashy solos but to pull them in by creating an alluring atmosphere. Mr. Macero’s editing, his mixing and especially his artful cross-fades transformed short, distinct pieces into lengthy sonic collages. In much the same way, the members of Tortoise have used the remix techniques of electronic dance music to give their material greater depth.

Still, obsessive experimentation can easily become a major drag, and Tortoise’s love of making strange noises gets too much play on this boxed set. For instrumental music to succeed, the listener has to have something to hold on to, whether it’s a memorable melody or a distinctive solo voice (Miles’ trumpet, for example). Tortoise has several such voices, most notably the biting tone of guitarist Jeff Parker and the percolation of those trusty vibraphones, as played by any of the group’s three percussionists (John McEntire, Dan Bitney and John Herndon). And they’ve consistently proven that they can come up with clever melodies. But when those strengths are overwhelmed by their penchant for knob-twiddling, the music suffers.

For these reasons, the DVD of A Lazarus Taxon is by far the best of the box. Along with a handful of nifty video clips, there’s a generous selection of live performances, which show what Tortoise really sound like, remix-free. On two outstanding tracks from the 1999 Deutsches Jazz Festival, the band expands to a nine-piece unit with the addition of four jazz players, including saxophonist Fred Anderson, a founder of Chicago’s fabled Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Mr. Anderson’s composition “Othello” gets an energetic workout, revealing the band’s free-jazz influences.

Elsewhere on the DVD, you can find murky footage of a 1996 gig in Toronto, which demonstrates both Tortoise’s onstage intensity and their early lack of crowd-engagement skills; Mr. Herndon stares out into the room as if he were inspecting a poorly plastered wall.

Matters seem to have improved on this front in recent years, however. The newest clip here, from an appearance last year on the wonderful Chicago public-access TV show Chic-A-Go-Go, features the band playing “Seneca” while wearing Planet of the Apes masks. The people making up the studio audience, many of them also creatively attired, are clearly having a great time, and no wonder—the party vibe is infectious.

In short, Tortoise: fine band making noble music. A Lazarus Taxon: not the career retrospective they deserve. But while you’re waiting for the real Tortoise boxed set to arrive, see if you can borrow the DVD from one of your indie-rock completist pals. You could do a lot worse.

The quintessential post-rock band was a quintet from Chicago called Tortoise. They were post-rock because they didn’t have a singer, because their members swapped instruments frequently (meaning no one had a set role in the group), and because their music was wildly experimental yet still accessible. Their best album, Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996), opened with a 21-minute suite, “Djed,” that made reference to everything from cool jazz and dub reggae to minimalist composition and Indonesian gamelan ensembles; midway through, the piece dissolved in a burst of tape distortion, then recongealed with a completely different theme. All very pretentious—and all very exciting.

The new genre didn’t have much of a shelf life: By the turn of the century, most of the “post-rock” bands were fading into oblivion. Tortoise, however, continued to record and perform, cheered on by a small cult audience. Unfortunately, their latest release, A Lazarus Taxon (Thrill Jockey), a three-CD, one-DVD boxed set that looks back to the band’s 15-year career, is unlikely to expand their popularity. Any truly effective sampler of Tortoise’s output would have to include highlights from their six albums, but that’s not the case with this set, which is made up mainly of various B-sides, EP tracks and remixes, many of which have been out of print for years. (Hence the title: A Lazarus taxon is a paleontological term referring to life forms that vanish from the fossil record for long periods only to reappear later, like Lazarus rising from the dead.)

The box starts off well with “Gamera,” from 1995, which begins with a jaunty, folk-like acoustic guitar figure, morphs into a high-octane jam over an ominous drone and finally, more than 11 minutes later, fades out with a hiss of backwards percussion. The band’s sense of pacing is exemplary here; whenever bassist Doug McCombs switches to another note, it feels like a tectonic shift. But as the set progresses, the going gets tougher, peaking in difficulty with a remix of the 1994 track “Cornpone Brunch.” In its original version on Tortoise’s eponymous debut album, the song was a thrilling rush of power chords and frantic drum rolls; the remix, by Mike Watt of the great 1980’s band the Minutemen, submerges these positive features beneath what sounds like 20 additional bass parts. The truth is that only committed fans will want to hear most of these tracks more than once.

Worse, the whole package has an air of artsy superiority. Black-and-white photos of traffic accidents by the Swiss photographer Arnold Odermatt adorn the covers of the four separate discs and the box itself, as if to say, “Gee, isn’t modern society messed up?” Not exactly a novel observation. And the liner notes by Alan Licht, though clear overall, push the great-cultural-significance angle a little too hard. “[T]he fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War,” Mr. Licht claims, “set the stage for a new interest … in free musics (free jazz, free improvisation) but also for dub and remixing.” Just how the opening of Checkpoint Charlie affected the decision to record a song in Chicago featuring two vibraphones—a Tortoise trademark—is unclear to me.

When I first heard Tortoise in the mid-90’s, I didn’t think of them as any kind of rock band, post- or otherwise, but as a new kind of fusion group—one of the few to actually follow the aesthetic lead that Miles Davis took on his late-60’s and early-70’s albums, the most famous being In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. For the past 30 years, fusion has been the subgenre that dares not speak its name, due to the fact that many of Davis’ protégés turned it into a platform for the soulless display of chops. But Miles and his producer, Teo Macero, had something very different in mind: Their goal wasn’t to wow people with flashy solos but to pull them in by creating an alluring atmosphere. Mr. Macero’s editing, his mixing and especially his artful cross-fades transformed short, distinct pieces into lengthy sonic collages. In much the same way, the members of Tortoise have used the remix techniques of electronic dance music to give their material greater depth.

Still, obsessive experimentation can easily become a major drag, and Tortoise’s love of making strange noises gets too much play on this boxed set. For instrumental music to succeed, the listener has to have something to hold on to, whether it’s a memorable melody or a distinctive solo voice (Miles’ trumpet, for example). Tortoise has several such voices, most notably the biting tone of guitarist Jeff Parker and the percolation of those trusty vibraphones, as played by any of the group’s three percussionists (John McEntire, Dan Bitney and John Herndon). And they’ve consistently proven that they can come up with clever melodies. But when those strengths are overwhelmed by their penchant for knob-twiddling, the music suffers.

For these reasons, the DVD of A Lazarus Taxon is by far the best of the box. Along with a handful of nifty video clips, there’s a generous selection of live performances, which show what Tortoise really sound like, remix-free. On two outstanding tracks from the 1999 Deutsches Jazz Festival, the band expands to a nine-piece unit with the addition of four jazz players, including saxophonist Fred Anderson, a founder of Chicago’s fabled Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Mr. Anderson’s composition “Othello” gets an energetic workout, revealing the band’s free-jazz influences.

Elsewhere on the DVD, you can find murky footage of a 1996 gig in Toronto, which demonstrates both Tortoise’s onstage intensity and their early lack of crowd-engagement skills; Mr. Herndon stares out into the room as if he were inspecting a poorly plastered wall.

Matters seem to have improved on this front in recent years, however. The newest clip here, from an appearance last year on the wonderful Chicago public-access TV show Chic-A-Go-Go, features the band playing “Seneca” while wearing Planet of the Apes masks. The people making up the studio audience, many of them also creatively attired, are clearly having a great time, and no wonder—the party vibe is infectious.

In short, Tortoise: fine band making noble music. A Lazarus Taxon: not the career retrospective they deserve. But while you’re waiting for the real Tortoise boxed set to arrive, see if you can borrow the DVD from one of your indie-rock completist pals. You could do a lot worse.

Two events in recent weeks suggest possible answers to this question. First came the bolt-from-the-blue announcement that Radiohead’s singer, Thom Yorke, was putting out a solo disc, The Eraser, as part of a simple one-album deal with the independent label XL Recordings, known for its left-field electronic dance releases. Mr. Yorke is undoubtedly Radiohead’s central creative force, and he’d never before expressed (at least not in public) any wish to work outside the band. Given XL’s stylistic slant, Mr. Yorke’s own musical proclivities, and reports that Radiohead were already deep into the process of making their next album, it seemed reasonable to assume that The Eraser would be little more than a minor exercise in electronica, an ambient doodle produced while killing time between band recording sessions.

It’s no such thing. If there’s anything about Mr. Yorke’s first solo album that’s not surprising, it’s the general absence of guitars and the abundance of keyboards and odd-sounding programmed beats that rattle and twitch like the audio equivalent of a facial tic. Just about everything else is unexpected.

The disc’s nine tracks are actual songs, most of them tightly structured, with immediately recognizable verses and choruses—unlike a large percentage of the last three Radiohead albums. Mr. Yorke’s plaintive, almost childlike voice is way out front in the mix, and he even deigns to enunciate, which he hasn’t done much in the last 10 years.

For one track on The Eraser—“Harrowdown Hill”—Mr. Yorke also dispenses with his customary cryptic approach to lyric writing and delivers an unambiguous protest song. Located in Oxfordshire near Mr. Yorke’s home, Harrowdown Hill is where the body of David Kelly was found in July 2003. (A biological-warfare expert at the British Ministry of Defense, Dr. Kelly had disputed his government’s claims about Iraq’s arms capabilities in an anonymous BBC interview and was quickly outed as the source of a classified-information leak, whereupon he committed suicide—or so the official report concluded.) Mr. Yorke seems to suspect foul play, as lines like “You will be dispensed with when you’ve become inconvenient” make clear. The music accompanying these words displays the energy that’s so often born of righteous anger, capped by an aggressive bass line and a creepy piano lick redolent of Hammer horror movies.

Elsewhere, the mood seems more positive, though Mr. Yorke’s past penchant for gallows humor suggests that this impression may be misleading. One standout number, “Atoms for Peace,” certainly feels hopeful, as Mr. Yorke sings “No more talk about the old days / It’s time for something great” over a soft synthesizer backdrop reminiscent of British cult favorites the Blue Nile. The octave-jumping melody is demanding, but Mr. Yorke negotiates it with enviable ease. It all adds up to his most accessible work since OK Computer.

In recent interviews, Mr. Yorke has said that he put together The Eraser in a mere three weeks, assisted only by producer Nigel Godrich, Radiohead’s longtime right-hand man in the recording studio. In contrast, the gestation period of every Radiohead album has been notoriously long and fraught with conflict. Up until now, it was only natural to think that Mr. Yorke, who’s as combative as he is talented, was responsible for much of the band’s internal strife. The speedy completion of The Eraser indicates that he’s not the only culprit; perhaps the group dynamic (or at least this particular group’s dynamic) breeds creativity and tension in equal measures.

THE OTHER MAJOR EVENT IN RADIOHEADLAND is the band’s ongoing tour of North America and Europe, which brought them to New York for two sold-out concerts at the Theater at Madison Square Garden on June 13 and 14. The tour’s purpose is to audience-test new material for the seventh Radiohead album, which is scheduled to appear sometime in 2007; a sure sign of how much this band is adored is that they can sell out multiple nights at theaters across the globe playing songs that nobody knows. (Not that the new songs stayed unknown for long—live video and audio bootlegs were circulating on the Web within hours of the tour’s first date in Copenhagen.)

Radiohead aren’t playing anything from The Eraser on this tour, and the new band material is largely guitar-oriented—a few songs even feature the old three-guitar lineup (Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien and Mr. Yorke) that first set them apart from the pop pack in the early 90’s. From this, you could draw the conclusion that the rest of the band decided to let Mr. Yorke blow off some electronic steam with his solo venture so they could focus on making more conventional rock music. But to judge from what I heard at the second Garden show, that conclusion doesn’t hold water: Most of the band’s new songs could hardly be called conventional. Several, particularly the drifting mood pieces “Arpeggi” and “15 Step,” are far more abstract than any song on The Eraser.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t find an ecstatic audience. At least half of the eight new songs Radiohead played sounded like winners, establishing a satisfying melodic arc without being obvious about it. During the brash, up-tempo “Bangers ‘N’ Mash,” Mr. Yorke pounded a miniature drum kit in conjunction with the band’s regular drummer, Phil Selway; the song reached an apparent plateau early on, but when Mr. Yorke came back in at the end yelling “I’m taking you down when I go down,” it acquired a new, furious vigor. “Videotape” drew its considerable power from the rhythmic tension between Mr. Yorke’s offbeat piano and Mr. Selway’s locked-tight drumming, while “Down Is the New Up” coupled an infectiously funky groove with a chord progression (and a vocal from Mr. Yorke) that climbed enticingly into the stratosphere.

The ardor with which the Garden crowd greeted these new songs—and the speed with which they were posted to various corners of the Web—suggests that Radiohead may now have the power to do something no pop group has done before: make groundbreaking music and be wildly successful without a record company acting as middleman. And yet the appearance of The Eraser throws a pinch of uncertainty into the mix. It’s too early to say what effect, if any, Thom Yorke’s solo bow will have on Radiohead’s future, but the message it sends (as Hoagy Carmichael once put it, “I get along without you very well”) is hard to ignore.

Two events in recent weeks suggest possible answers to this question. First came the bolt-from-the-blue announcement that Radiohead’s singer, Thom Yorke, was putting out a solo disc, The Eraser, as part of a simple one-album deal with the independent label XL Recordings, known for its left-field electronic dance releases. Mr. Yorke is undoubtedly Radiohead’s central creative force, and he’d never before expressed (at least not in public) any wish to work outside the band. Given XL’s stylistic slant, Mr. Yorke’s own musical proclivities, and reports that Radiohead were already deep into the process of making their next album, it seemed reasonable to assume that The Eraser would be little more than a minor exercise in electronica, an ambient doodle produced while killing time between band recording sessions.

It’s no such thing. If there’s anything about Mr. Yorke’s first solo album that’s not surprising, it’s the general absence of guitars and the abundance of keyboards and odd-sounding programmed beats that rattle and twitch like the audio equivalent of a facial tic. Just about everything else is unexpected.

The disc’s nine tracks are actual songs, most of them tightly structured, with immediately recognizable verses and choruses—unlike a large percentage of the last three Radiohead albums. Mr. Yorke’s plaintive, almost childlike voice is way out front in the mix, and he even deigns to enunciate, which he hasn’t done much in the last 10 years.

For one track on The Eraser—“Harrowdown Hill”—Mr. Yorke also dispenses with his customary cryptic approach to lyric writing and delivers an unambiguous protest song. Located in Oxfordshire near Mr. Yorke’s home, Harrowdown Hill is where the body of David Kelly was found in July 2003. (A biological-warfare expert at the British Ministry of Defense, Dr. Kelly had disputed his government’s claims about Iraq’s arms capabilities in an anonymous BBC interview and was quickly outed as the source of a classified-information leak, whereupon he committed suicide—or so the official report concluded.) Mr. Yorke seems to suspect foul play, as lines like “You will be dispensed with when you’ve become inconvenient” make clear. The music accompanying these words displays the energy that’s so often born of righteous anger, capped by an aggressive bass line and a creepy piano lick redolent of Hammer horror movies.

Elsewhere, the mood seems more positive, though Mr. Yorke’s past penchant for gallows humor suggests that this impression may be misleading. One standout number, “Atoms for Peace,” certainly feels hopeful, as Mr. Yorke sings “No more talk about the old days / It’s time for something great” over a soft synthesizer backdrop reminiscent of British cult favorites the Blue Nile. The octave-jumping melody is demanding, but Mr. Yorke negotiates it with enviable ease. It all adds up to his most accessible work since OK Computer.

In recent interviews, Mr. Yorke has said that he put together The Eraser in a mere three weeks, assisted only by producer Nigel Godrich, Radiohead’s longtime right-hand man in the recording studio. In contrast, the gestation period of every Radiohead album has been notoriously long and fraught with conflict. Up until now, it was only natural to think that Mr. Yorke, who’s as combative as he is talented, was responsible for much of the band’s internal strife. The speedy completion of The Eraser indicates that he’s not the only culprit; perhaps the group dynamic (or at least this particular group’s dynamic) breeds creativity and tension in equal measures.

THE OTHER MAJOR EVENT IN RADIOHEADLAND is the band’s ongoing tour of North America and Europe, which brought them to New York for two sold-out concerts at the Theater at Madison Square Garden on June 13 and 14. The tour’s purpose is to audience-test new material for the seventh Radiohead album, which is scheduled to appear sometime in 2007; a sure sign of how much this band is adored is that they can sell out multiple nights at theaters across the globe playing songs that nobody knows. (Not that the new songs stayed unknown for long—live video and audio bootlegs were circulating on the Web within hours of the tour’s first date in Copenhagen.)

Radiohead aren’t playing anything from The Eraser on this tour, and the new band material is largely guitar-oriented—a few songs even feature the old three-guitar lineup (Jonny Greenwood, Ed O’Brien and Mr. Yorke) that first set them apart from the pop pack in the early 90’s. From this, you could draw the conclusion that the rest of the band decided to let Mr. Yorke blow off some electronic steam with his solo venture so they could focus on making more conventional rock music. But to judge from what I heard at the second Garden show, that conclusion doesn’t hold water: Most of the band’s new songs could hardly be called conventional. Several, particularly the drifting mood pieces “Arpeggi” and “15 Step,” are far more abstract than any song on The Eraser.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t find an ecstatic audience. At least half of the eight new songs Radiohead played sounded like winners, establishing a satisfying melodic arc without being obvious about it. During the brash, up-tempo “Bangers ‘N’ Mash,” Mr. Yorke pounded a miniature drum kit in conjunction with the band’s regular drummer, Phil Selway; the song reached an apparent plateau early on, but when Mr. Yorke came back in at the end yelling “I’m taking you down when I go down,” it acquired a new, furious vigor. “Videotape” drew its considerable power from the rhythmic tension between Mr. Yorke’s offbeat piano and Mr. Selway’s locked-tight drumming, while “Down Is the New Up” coupled an infectiously funky groove with a chord progression (and a vocal from Mr. Yorke) that climbed enticingly into the stratosphere.

The ardor with which the Garden crowd greeted these new songs—and the speed with which they were posted to various corners of the Web—suggests that Radiohead may now have the power to do something no pop group has done before: make groundbreaking music and be wildly successful without a record company acting as middleman. And yet the appearance of The Eraser throws a pinch of uncertainty into the mix. It’s too early to say what effect, if any, Thom Yorke’s solo bow will have on Radiohead’s future, but the message it sends (as Hoagy Carmichael once put it, “I get along without you very well”) is hard to ignore.

"Andy Summers' band actually gave us one of our first breaks," Mr. Elfman, a Los Angeles native, recalled two days after the A.C.O. concert. He was nursing a low-fat cappuccino in the lobby of the Mercer Hotel, his quietly intense 51-year-old face framed by thinning red hair and thick-rimmed glasses. The Police shared a manager, Miles Copeland, with Oingo Boingo. "They were the only major band that ever let us open for them in the 17 years we were together," said Mr. Elfman. "They put us on the bill for some shows at the L.A. Forum, and it was a big deal. Suddenly our live audience multiplied tremendously. We picked up thousands of new fans from those concerts.

"I'm not even sure that they're aware of what a great favor they did us," he continued. "I'd wager they're not." Unfortunately, the A.C.O. concert didn't change that. Mr. Elfman barely got a chance to chat with Mr. Summers backstage, and Mr. Summers was not available to comment for this story.

Messrs. Elfman and Summers have led busy lives since their last quasi-meeting. Following the Police's breakup in 1986, Mr. Summers established himself as one of jazz-rock fusion's more tasteful exemplars; a new compilation CD, The X Tracks (Fuel 2000), offers a fine sampling of his recent oeuvre. Mr. Elfman continued to front Oingo Boingo well into the 90's, but eventually his soundtrack work became all-consuming. He began scoring Hollywood films in 1985 when he collaborated with director Tim Burton on Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and the two have worked together frequently since. His many other credits include the themes to The Simpsons and Desperate Housewives.

As rock musicians, Messrs. Elfman and Summers were nothing if not adventurous-and judging by the Carnegie Hall concert, that hasn't changed. Though neither Mr. Elfman's Serenada Schizophrana nor Mr. Marshall's Dark Florescence could be called a complete success, both compositions were imbued with a winning, what-the-hell spirit that left one hoping for a repeat performance.

Ever since his days as a student of Morton Subotnick at the California Institute of the Arts in the late 60's, Mr. Marshall has been enraptured by the modal gamelan music of Bali and Java and by the possibilities of blending electronics and live instrumentation. Both interests were on display in Dark Florescence. Mr. Summers played a striking, butterfly-shaped electric guitar whose tone was heavily processed; at one point, his distorted notes faded into a thick haze of reverb. The other guitarist, Benjamin Verdery, stuck with a more traditional classical instrument, but it too was amplified.

Oddly, the semi-improvised duet by the two guitarists, probably meant to be the piece's heart, turned out to be its least compelling feature, as both players leaned on comfortable clichés. The guitarists' thorny rhythmic interaction with the orchestra was far more interesting, and the somber closing section, in which the violins produced sliding harmonics that suggested the whistle of tracer bullets in the air, carried a potent emotional charge. Still, an imperfect sound balance between orchestra and amplified instruments dulled the overall impact. One suspects that Dark Florescence would make a better studio recording than a concert piece.

For Serenada Schizophrana, a 40-minute work in six unrelated movements, Mr. Elfman packed the stage with bodies and instruments. Two grand pianos lurked in the background, flanked by synthesizers, harps, an imposing stockpile of tubular bells and, for the final three movements, an eight-woman chorus. In keeping with the piece's title, the music veered madly from Ellingtonian whimsy to Bernard Herrmannesque agitation.

As cascading dual piano lines melded with ominous pizzicato strings, it was almost impossible to keep from asking, "Which movie did this come from again?" No surprise, given Mr. Elfman's pedigree. But several moments transcended the soundtrack pigeonhole. The tortured swing of the third movement conjured up the image of a jazz band on a storm-tossed raft, with trash-can cymbals acting as the crashing waves. And the furious horn-stoked climax and surprising last-second resolution of the closing movement made for a rousing finish.

Back at the Mercer Hotel in the aftermath of his Carnegie Hall debut, Mr. Elfman, who self-deprecatingly calls himself a "throwback" to the styles of early 20th-century Russian composers such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich, revealed that Serenada Schizophrana had first been conceived as a chamber piece, to be performed in Carnegie's more intimate Zankel Hall. Moving its premiere to a later date in the main Isaac Stern Auditorium meshed well with Mr. Elfman's personal life (the original Zankel date had been set for the same week in January that his wife was due to deliver their new baby)-and the switch also gave him the opportunity to write something more ambitious. But when he flew into town a few months ago to visit the hall, he started wondering what he'd gotten himself into.

"I'd never been there," he said, "and it was incredibly intimidating. I felt like a little kid in the playground of the big boys. I just thought, 'I'm fucked. These walls are used to some serious shit, and they're going to hear my notes bouncing around and simply reject them.'"

Mr. Elfman acknowledged that in the end everything had turned out just fine, and that he might even chance writing more concert pieces in the future. "But now," he added enthusiastically, "I have something I can needle my son about for the rest of his life. I can say, 'It's your fault, Oliver! Because of you, they had to move me up to the big hall, and it was scary. The hall scared me, Oliver, and it was all your fault!'"

Just in case it sounds as if I'm gloating, I should mention here that Internet piracy gave me a lucky break, because without it I probably still wouldn't have heard the new U2 album. A tight security clampdown by the group and its label-following the much-publicized theft of an incomplete version of the record during a band photo session earlier this year-made it impossible for most members of the press to listen to the disc before its release. I could rant about how such precautions never work and how it doesn't make sense for journalists to be treated like criminals, but that's a tired refrain and can't erase the fact that copyright robbery helps no one in the long run. So instead I'll say this: Potential U2 thieves, don't do it! How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb deserves your money.

Put simply, U2's 11th full-length studio effort is the album that its predecessor, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), was supposed to be but wasn't. You may recall that the previous platter was hailed as a return to classic form after the questionable experimentation of Zooropa (1993) and Pop (1997)-both of which I love, by the way. Sure enough, the programmed-electronics quotient was down, and U2's principal strengths-Bono's passionate singing, the Edge's chiming guitars and the supple Adam Clayton–Larry Mullen Jr. rhythm section-were back up front. But though the sounds were right, the spirit was wrong; too much of the album seemed empty and disconnected, as if the band members were all playing in different rooms.

How to Dismantle, by contrast, is the work of a unified front, as the focused fury of the opening track, "Vertigo," makes clear. Yes, it's a silly song, but it rocks with an abandon that makes All That You Can't cuts like "Beautiful Day" and "Elevation" sound tame. Nothing else here is quite as heavy as "Vertigo," but the slow-building "Miracle Drug" and the anthemic closer "Yahweh" (who else would give a tune a name like that?) also tap into traditional U2 pleasure centers, creating a sense of uplift that may just have you believing salvation for all is right around the corner. And despite a few clunky lyrics and one borderline-dubious selection ("Love and Peace or Else"), there are no outright embarrassments.

It's pretty clear by now, 28 years into U2's career, that this band is never going to sound the way it did on 80's landmarks like War (1983) and The Joshua Tree (1987). Then again, it's also clear that U2 will always sound like U2, proclaiming its spiritual yearning in bold strokes on a vast sonic canvas. It helps that they know how to recycle. If the bridge on How to Dismantle's "Crumbs from Your Table" sounds oddly similar to the coda of "Walk On" from the previous album, that's because their chord progressions are exactly the same. Still, that harmonic information is put to much better use here, as the Edge coaxes shimmering overtones from his amplifier and Bono wails, "Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die." The copy beats the original-one more sign that this is U2's real return to form.

Of course, lots of people can't stand U2. Criticism has dogged the band for decades: too serious, too silly, too God-obsessed, too shallow, too pretentious, etc., etc. If you count yourself among the loathers, you may be attracted by the title of Neil McCormick's new book, Killing Bono (VH1/Pocket), but please bear in mind that Mr. McCormick is actually a fan of Bono and crew. Even so, I'd recommend this book to anyone-Bonophile or Bonophobe-who appreciates sharp writing. And if you've had any dealings with the music business, you'll love it all the more-though you may occasionally find yourself wincing in sympathetic pain.

Since 1995, Mr. McCormick has been the pop-music columnist for London's Daily Telegraph. Back in the 70's, he attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin along with the four members of U2. He remains friends with them to this day, but it's been tough: Mr. McCormick wanted to be a rock star, too, and luck was not on his side. As his former classmates scaled the heights of fame and fortune, Mr. McCormick slogged through a series of ill-fated bands-the Modulators, Yeah! Yeah!, Shook Up!-that repeatedly found themselves within inches of the brass ring before falling prey to some frustrating mishap. Management meltdowns, record-company cold feet, distributor bankruptcies and just plain stupid decisions all feature prominently in the narrative.

Killing Bono traces two very different paths through the music world with equal measures of clear-eyed acceptance and lacerating wit. Mr. McCormick pulls no punches. For example, on the subject of artists-and-repertoire executives, the so-called "talent scouts" of the music industry, he writes, "This is what I have learned about A&R over the years: it is essentially a glorified system for keeping musicians out of record companies."

The many musicians, managers, publishers and record execs who enter and exit the story are, without exception, skillfully and memorably drawn. Bono himself comes off as refreshingly three-dimensional; Mr. McCormick admires him but knows him well enough to cut through his bullshit. Best of all are the vignettes about Mr. McCormick's first job, as assistant art director for the vaunted Irish music magazine Hot Press, a position he entered at age 17 with precisely zero experience. (Years later, he asked editor Niall Stokes why on earth he'd been hired. Said Mr. Stokes, "You were so obnoxious I thought you had to have something going on.")

Toward the end of the book, Mr. McCormick recalls a 1996 dinner with Bono, during which the two discussed their strange, almost Dorian Gray–like relationship. U2's frontman jovially suggested that there was only one way for Mr. McCormick to achieve the worldwide fame he'd craved for so long: "You've got to kill me!" (Hence the book's title.) "I don't begrudge you a thing," Mr. McCormick replied. "I think you got everything you deserved. What I worry about is: does that mean I got what I deserved too?"

Somewhere deep in the most bitter and poisonous recesses of his being, Mr. McCormick may always feel that he got a raw deal in life. But looking at the matter objectively, he hasn't done badly for himself: He may not have killed Bono, either literally or figuratively, but he sure has written a marvelous book.

In the 1960's, the term "soul music" defined the deepest in black American pop. Now it seems caught in history's aspic, like Yippies, love-ins and transcendental meditation. Soul's latest replacement, "neo-soul" (think Erykah Badu or Jill Scott), though pleasant, doesn't pack the same punch. Listen to Aretha Franklin's hearty growl on "Respect," Curtis Mayfield's plaintive falsetto on the Impressions' "People Get Ready" or Stevie Wonder's energized testifying on "I Was Made to Love Her," and you hear the difference at once.

The life stories of Mr. Wonder, Ms. Franklin and Mayfield are at the heart of Craig Werner's Higher Ground. But another story lurks behind theirs: that of the civil-rights movement, for which soul provided a constant soundtrack. What the music and the movement shared, in Mr. Werner's words, was "the gospel vision"-a vision of redemption and shared possibility, offering "the hope that, if we held together and kept faith with the spirit, a change was gonna come."

Mr. Werner explains that he chose to focus on Mr. Wonder, Ms. Franklin and Mayfield because they were all raised in the North, where blacks of the mid-20th century seemed closer to realizing the gospel vision than their Southern counterparts. Of course, they weren't; the movement tactics that beat segregation in Montgomery and Birmingham couldn't win the war against racism in Chicago and Detroit. But the belief that they could was real, a special Northern optimism that Mr. Werner hears in the music of each of his principal subjects.

Higher Ground shuttles restlessly between the three musicians, at least two of whom offer great biographical material. Ms. Franklin, strong-minded daughter of a famous preacher, grappled with early motherhood, a string of bad men and a career marked by frequent blowouts with collaborators. Mr. Wonder, blind nearly from birth, proved to be both an uncannily gifted musician and a master at getting the most out of his relationship with Motown Records. Mayfield's life, like his music, is less dramatic-at least until the 1990 stage accident that left him paraplegic-but his foresight in taking early charge of his own business affairs is notable.

Given Mr. Werner's pedigree (he's a professor of African American studies at the University of Wisconsin), his emphasis on the music's sociocultural impact is no surprise. But the book's sharpest moments occur when he leaves historical context behind and gets into detail about the actual creation of the songs. His treatment of the sessions for Ms. Franklin's Atlantic Records debut, 1967's I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, is informative and lively. It's a kick to be reminded that the crack studio band hired for the album was all-white, and to note that a trumpeter's casual but racially tinged remark to Ms. Franklin's then-husband nearly ended the recording process for good only a few hours after it had started.

Mr. Werner is a fan. Sometimes his admiration leads him in dubious directions (he claims that "well over 99 percent of the albums released since Elvis Presley walked into the Sun studios" don't match the quality of Mr. Wonder's Talking Book, Innervisions or Songs in the Key of Life-let's play it safe and call it 95 percent), but he generally remains clear-eyed, giving a balanced view of both Ms. Franklin's early, direction-challenged work for Columbia and Mayfield's post-1975 releases, which found him taking on the challenge of disco and losing.

The turning point, according to Mr. Werner, came in 1978, when-for the first time in 20 years-the Billboard Top 100 chart didn't feature a single record by Mr. Wonder, Ms. Franklin or Mayfield. Mr. Werner calls this a "deafening eulogy for the gospel vision," which had died in the wake of the movement's undeniable gains, despite the fact that those gains were still incomplete.

The trawl through the next 25 years is mostly depressing. Both Mr. Wonder and Ms. Franklin had successes, but their music no longer carried cultural weight. Mayfield struggled in relative obscurity, suffered his traumatic accident, labored mightily to make one last album and died in 1999. Meanwhile, the movement became increasingly irrelevant, squandering its energy on symbolic gestures like the Martin Luther King national holiday rather than pushing for concrete social change. And yet the promise of the gospel vision still lingers; Mr. Werner argues that in a post-9/11 world, that vision may be just what we need to set things right.

It's tough to get a hold on Mr. Werner's central point. Is he arguing that the rise and fall of American soul mirrored the rise and fall of the movement, or implying that the two were related in some cause-and-effect fashion? He makes a convincing case for the former, but not the latter. Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder became less important figures over time not because the fight for equality in America had failed, but because their new ideas weren't as good as their old ones. Most pop performers don't make vital music for long; that Ms. Franklin, Mr. Wonder and Mayfield managed to do so for over two decades is an impressive achievement.

For an overview, Higher Ground is well researched-though one wishes that Mr. Werner had actually interviewed more than 10 people. The lack of new quotes from Stevie Wonder is particularly unfortunate; Mr. Werner is forced to recycle old magazine interviews, none of which offer much insight into the music. Mr. Werner's writing also displays occasional failures of imagination: the frequent repetition, for instance, of stock phrases such as "[the movement's] foot soldiers" and "salt-and-pepper crowd."

Still, on the whole, the book is a welcome reminder of a time when black America, and its music, radiated hope, pride and boundless determination.

Mac Randall writes about music for The Observer, Rolling Stone, Mojo and various other publications.

Now Mr. Burns has put that experience behind him and returned to the vocation he was pursuing before children's-TV stardom intervened: composing and performing pop songs for a slightly maturer audience. The profile gained from his time on Blue's Clues -coupled, no doubt, with the major-league money one assumes he received for his efforts-helped him recruit a few ringers. Mr. Burns' debut album, Songs for Dustmites (PIAS America), features three men normally associated with those lovable neopsychedelic crackpots, the Flaming Lips: drummer Steven Drozd, bassist Michael Ivins and producer Dave Fridmann.

You can understand why a band that named its last full-length CD Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots would want to work with someone of Mr. Burns' pedigree: The concept's too off-the-wall to resist. But off-the-wall concepts can easily lead to off-your-head reality, and I must admit the words "self-indulgent vanity project" lingered in my mind as I prepared to listen to Songs for Dustmites . Luckily, what I heard was something else entirely: one of the most pleasant musical surprises of 2003 so far.

It turns out that Mr. Burns is a gifted songwriter with a knack for simple but effective melodies and self-deprecating wit (the key line of the infectious "What I Do on Saturday" is "I'm just a boring example of everybody else"). He's got the courage to call a song "Troposphere," and the skill to give it an airborne chorus to match. And though his voice is nothing special, it captures the spirit of these tunes perfectly: a little raw, a little geeky, but ready to take on the world.

Messrs. Fridmann, Ivins and Drozd, meanwhile, do their best to turn each selection into a symphony, piling on strings, horns, cacophonous percussion and-on the opening track, "Mighty Little Man"-pounding, speaker-busting synthesized bass. The result isn't that far removed from a Flaming Lips record, and the wall of sound sometimes threatens to eclipse the front man's personality. But to his credit, it never does. Songs for Dustmites suggests that the Kermit the Frog–level crossover move is within Mr. Burns' grasp.

"Bein' Green" was a big hit, after all.

A New Addiction

Another recent surprise, at least to me, has been the success of the reunited Jane's Addiction. Strays (Capitol), the band's first album in 13 years, debuted at No. 4 in Billboard with opening-week sales of 110,000. I didn't think that many people still cared. Then again, I was never a Jane's fan; Perry Farrell's strident whine always grated on my ears. But a few spins of the new album reveal that those 110,000 people may be on to something: Strays rocks like a mother. Guitarist Dave Navarro and drummer Stephen Perkins, joined by new bassist Chris Chaney, sound cockier than ever, while time has mellowed Mr. Farrell's vocal approach. Yet in the end, variety and dynamics are the key here. "Price I Pay" and "The Riches" are veritable mini-suites, morphing from jackhammer riff to delicate bridge with nary a warning. One wishes that the many crushingly boring alt-rock bands influenced by Jane's Addiction will take Strays to heart in this respect.

Racy Macy

Macy Gray's third CD, The Trouble with Being Myself (Epic), hasn't performed as well as Jane's, coming in at No. 44. That's a shame: The album's a load of fun, and a further refinement of her idiosyncratic retro-funk style. When it comes to soul singing, I'll take Ms. Gray's raspysquawk any day over the melismacrobatics of Mariah and Whitney, because she actually uses her limited chops to convey emotion instead of showing off. Funny emotions she conveys, too; on "My Fondest Childhood Memories," she boasts about killing off both her parents' lovers to keep Mom and Dad together. Songs like this may leave some questioning Ms. Gray's sanity, but only those who can't appreciate the devilish twinkle in her voice.

September Songs

In closing, here's a look at three upcoming releases, all of them worth your attention when they're released in early September.

· Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Take Them On, On Your Own (Virgin): The second band I know of to take its name from the classic Marlon Brando–Lee Marvin film The Wild One (the first being, arguably, the Beatles), BRMC has become such a cause célèbre in Britain that it's odd to be reminded they're two-thirds American. It's even odder once you've heard their music, which sounds as British as you can get, in the dark, noisy, moody tradition of Joy Division, the Cult, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and just about every artist signed to the Creation label. This, their second album, is an improvement on their first, sporting both vicious rock ("Six Barrel Shotgun") and spacy acoustic ruminations ("And I'm Aching"). The Club still doesn't quite know when to stop playing-extended codas and false endings abound-but in all other respects, it proves worthy of its buzz.

· East River Pipe, Garbageheads on Endless Stun (Merge): Home-studio hermit F.M. Cornog, recently transplanted from Astoria to New Jersey, makes deceptively bright and shiny pop songs under the name of East River Pipe (a sobriquet only slightly less believable than his real one). Garbageheads on Endless Stun is his fifth album, and like its predecessors, it coats bitterness and sorrow with catchy tunes, layers of low-rent keyboards and a healthy sense of humor. (Think Magnetic Fields without the overt camp factor.) Mr. Cornog takes caustic swipes at easy targets, including Internet millionaires and "slobs in SUV's" ("Where Does All the Money Go?"), but the stately ambiance of the music is forgiveness itself, if not redemption.

· Jeff Buckley, Live at Sin-é (Columbia): In the summer of 1993, shortly after signing with Columbia Records, Jeff Buckley played two lengthy one-man shows at Sin-é, the tiny St. Mark's Place cafe (which is enjoying a second incarnation on Attorney Street on the Lower East Side), where he'd been performing every Monday night for the previous year. His new label rolled tape on both nights, and used the recordings for a four-song EP released that fall. Ten years later, and six years after Mr. Buckley's untimely death, a two-CD, one-DVD expanded edition of Live at Sin-é , containing over two hours of unreleased material, is scheduled for release on Sept. 2.

What more can be said about the vast scope of Mr. Buckley's talent? His loss was the greatest suffered by pop music in the past decade, and hearing him in this intimate context, joking and making small talk with friends between songs, is both thrilling and heartbreaking. What stands out most is his elastic sense of time; his version of Bob Dylan's "If You See Her, Say Hello" takes nearly three minutes to get through the first line. Teasing the audience is an old trick, of course, but this is something more. It's as if Mr. Buckley realizes that once you've started the tune, you're that much closer to finishing it, and he's too drunk on the beauty of his own voice and guitar to even consider doing that. Odds are you'll feel the same way.

For this reason, I wasn't expecting much from Forty Words for Fear (Gaff Music), the new CD by novelist Madison Smartt Bell and poet Wyn Cooper. Even so, the album's back story was tough to resist. Mr. Bell's novel Anything Goes , published last year, concerned the to-ings and fro-ings of a fifth-tier bar band. While writing the book, Mr. Bell asked his friend of two decades, Mr. Cooper, to help him come up with song lyrics for his fictitious group. (In rock circles, Mr. Cooper is best known for writing a poem, "Fun," that, with some modifications, became Sheryl Crow's 1994 megahit "All I Wanna Do.") Not only were the lyrics included in the book but, as a lark, Mr. Bell, who plays guitar, also set them to music and recorded a demo tape of the songs.

Thanks to the intercession of Gaff Music label head Scott Beal, that tape made it into the hands of producer Don Dixon, famous for his work with the Smithereens, Let's Active and R.E.M. Mr. Dixon liked what he heard, set up some studio time with long-time collaborator Mitch Easter (who engineered the record), recruited co-producer Jim Brock and hired some crack musicians-and before long, Mr. Bell's lark had become an honest-to-goodness record. This is what we in the journalism trade call a nice hook. But again, it's a novelist and a poet making a rock album; the precedents aren't tremendous.

Which makes Forty Words for Fear all the more surprising. Though no masterpiece, it's a thoroughly absorbing piece of work. Songs with titles like "The Here Below" and "What God Had Up His Sleeve" lay mordantly humorous lyrics and a general air of foreboding over rustic blues backdrops. Call it woodshed noir.

Mr. Bell won't win any singing competitions, but his gruff, quaky voice-reminiscent of the aforementioned Mr. Cohen, as well as folkmeister Greg Brown and the late Boston hipster Mark Sandman of Morphine-is just right for the music's thoughtfully ragged tone. (Mr. Cooper, on the other hand, limits his vocalizing to the recitation of a few stray lines.)

Better still are the arresting sonic touches sprinkled throughout, courtesy, I assume, of Messrs. Dixon and Brock. The percussion underlying the album's opening track, "On 8 Mile," sounds like somebody banging metal garbage cans together, and probably is. The heaviest rock number, "Anything Goes," could almost pass for ZZ Top-except that the lead instrument is a banjo. Elsewhere, accordion, trombone and short-wave radio make memorable appearances. The creativity on display here is such that one can't help concluding a second career is within Mr. Bell's grasp, if the novel-writing thing doesn't pan out.

That's Not Phair!

If you're still somehow wondering whether Liz Phair has really sold out, I can tell you unequivocally that she has. Her new album, titled simply Liz Phair (Capitol), is about as transparent a bid for Top 40 radio play as you can get.

But what's wrong with that?

With her classic first album, Exile in Guyville , released in 1993, Ms. Phair gained the kind of street credibility that today's bespectacled Williamsburg nerds would kill for. Any further adulation from the fringes of society would be redundant. More to the point, she's a 36-year-old single mom, and all the rave reviews in the world won't buy baby a new pair of shoes.

The problem is that Ms. Phair's pursuit of commercial acceptance has diluted her personality, which is the reason we still care about her 10 years after her debut. Among the many people she hired to compile this album were the Matrix, the production team that gave the world Avril Lavigne's "Complicated," and, sadly, Liz Phair is much like that horrid teenager's simulated rock: pure pabulum coated with a thin layer of processed toughness that's as catchy as it is empty.

Ms. Phair, of course, trumps Ms. Lavigne when it comes to sexual forthrightness; her frequent use of dirty words heated up many a reviewer when she first arrived on the scene. On the new disc, she's still up to her old tricks, but the results are more stupid than sexy. The principal offender, "H.W.C.," features a refrain that some might view as risqué: "Gimme your hot white come." Yet the way Ms. Phair sings these words, in the la-di-da voice of a high-school talent-show folkie, removes any potential thrill. It's further proof that spaying and neutering, though helpful for pets, doesn't make for great rock 'n' roll.

Dull Dan

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the prime movers of Steely Dan, have been around long enough now that they seem like family-the two weird uncles you never had. Hyper-educated masters of insular jive talk, they seem to be enduring an endless midlife crisis. They're hopelessly cynical, yet occasionally blindsided by bouts of twisted romanticism, usually brought on by the temptations of much, much younger women. Or at least the characters they write about are, and have been since Mr. Fagen and Mr. Becker started the band in the early 70's.

In this respect, they've stayed consistent; their latest release, Everything Must Go (Reprise), is full of guys like the sad sack in "Things I Miss the Most," who takes his mind off his lady love's departure by "building the Andrea Doria out of balsa wood."

As always, the Dan's barbed lyrics are nothing short of brilliant, and Mr. Fagen's acerbic New York whine remains the consummate vehicle for them. But the rest of the package is troubling. Over time, Messrs. Becker and Fagen have settled into a way too comfortable mid-tempo pseudo-jazz-funk groove. Everything Must Go 's rhythm tracks have a generic quality that renders them almost interchangeable with one another. At least two-thirds of Mr. Becker's noodly guitar fills could have been excised without harm. Worst of all, the tunes are downright predictable.

Most critics and fans view the antiseptic fern-bar soundtracks of 1980's Gaucho as Steely Dan's nadir, but in melodic and harmonic terms, that album's songs offer far more surprises than anything here. What happened to the dazzling twists and turns of "Glamour Profession" or "Aja" or-one of the most perfect pop songs recorded in the 1970's-"Rikki Don't Lose That Number"? Maybe that's as pointless a question as asking why Steely Dan don't rock anymore. But dammit, why don't they?

Get Thee Lee!

Finally, a brief word about New York singer/songwriter Chris Lee's new CD, Cool Rock (Misra). The critical boilerplate on Mr. Lee is that he's the inheritor of the late Jeff Buckley's mantle, and true enough, the two do share some vocal similarities, particularly a smooth, swooping falsetto. But the songs Mr. Lee writes don't have Mr. Buckley's rock edge. Instead, they're airy, urbane mélanges of jazz, soul and old-school pop, sharing deep roots with the 80's work of Everything But the Girl and Paul Weller's Style Council. It's a kind of music I didn't realize I missed until I heard Mr. Lee. That he plays superbly is welcome enough; that he ends the album with a heart-tugging rendition of Mississippi John Hurt's "Nobody Cares for Me" is fresh whipped cream and strawberries on the cake. Get Cool Rock .

1. Remember

(Enjoying Steady Rotation)

The Black Keys, thickfreakness (Fat Possum): Think the White Stripes cornered the market on guitar/drum duos? Think again. Hailing from Akron, Ohio, the Black Keys make sweaty, dirty, blistering blues-rock that clobbers all competitors. Not only is Dan Auerbach a ballsy white-soul belter, but he also gives good fuzzbox. Meanwhile, Patrick Carney thrashes his mini-kit like the second coming of John Bonham. If you like your metal heavy, consider these 11 tracks of pure lead-footed joy.

Goldfrapp, Black Cherry (Mute): If, on the other hand, you get your jollies from the blurps and bleeps produced by 80's-style analog synthesis, then Brit thrush Allison Goldfrapp and her partner in ambiance concoction, Will Gregory, have just what you're craving. Not only does the mechanistic pulse of such tracks as "Crystalline Green" and "Train" bring back fond memories of the Human League and early Depeche Mode, but the hormone-soaked lyrics and libidinous moans of "Twist" go one better, recalling the days when Donna Summer used to fake orgasms with Giorgio Moroder.

Junior Senior, D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat (Crunchy Frog): Due in part to the kind words of No. 1 fan Fatboy Slim, this Danish technopop duo has become a dance-club sensation in Britain. Junior and Senior (yep, that's what they call themselves) yell out such absurd lines as "He is the son of Frankenstein / He shakes it good, he shakes it fine" with childish glee over low-rent retro beats that lean closer to the B-52's than the Chemical Brothers. A U.S. label, Atlantic, just signed them and will, I presume, grant this domestic release in the near future. But I suggest getting down with their infectious shtick in its current imported form, before your neighbors start talking about this really "sweet" new band they've discovered called Junior Senior.

Gotan Project, La Revancha del Tango (XL Recordings): Another group coming belatedly to American attention-this album, their debut, was released in Europe two years ago and has sold nearly half a million copies-the Paris-based Gotan Project combines the traditional dance music of Argentina with dance music of a more modern stripe, mainly house with touches of dub, techno and drum 'n' bass. Not just a creation of studio boffins, La Revancha features real live instrumentalists, including Argentinean expat Nini Flores on wheezing bandoneon. Yes, it works as a non-demanding soundtrack for multiculti sophisticates' social gatherings. But in its idiosyncratic way, it also captures the essence of tango: both its cool, austere surface and the passion smoldering at its core.

Richard Thompson, The Old Kit Bag (spinART): Let's see, it's 2003-must be time for another excellent Richard Thompson album. As with every disc the veteran British singer/songwriter has recorded since his career began in the mid-60's, this one trades in Celtic-flavored folk rock of enviable finesse and black humor. The difference here is that the trio setting-bassist Danny Thompson and drummer Michael Jerome are the only other musicians-leaves more room than usual for Mr. Thompson to indulge in astonishing displays of guitarcraft. Many of his frenzied, string-bending solos bristle with dissonance, paying little heed to whether a song is in a major or minor key. Strictly speaking, they're littered with mistakes. But Mr. Thompson wills his wrong notes to work, and the result is genius.

2. Consider

(Good, If You Like That Sort of Thing)

Fleetwood Mac, Say You Will (Warner Bros.): Reason for existence: Will move more units than either a Lindsey Buckingham or a Stevie Nicks solo record. Born of resignation though it may be, the ex-couple's return to the Mac fold is welcome, making for a listening experience that ranges from pleasantly familiar to head-turningly aggressive. Christine McVie's departure isn't as fortunate; it means that Ms. Nicks gets a record nine cuts, which is at least two meandering dirges too many. Still, "Thrown Down" and "Running Through the Garden" find her at her bewitching best. And the plangent California strains of Mr. Buckingham's "What's the World Coming To" and "Steal Your Heart Away" won't be leaving my head anytime soon.

Prince Paul , Politics of the Business (Razor & Tie): The business, of course, is the music industry, and this is a concept album about it. Those familiar with Prince Paul's long history as a rapper and producer (Stetsasonic, De La Soul, Handsome Boy Modeling School) will expect high comedy, and they'll get it. All the stock characters are here, served up with relish: the manager who loves you till you flop, the washed-up artiste who thinks he still has something to say, the girlfriend who can't stand to come in second to record-making. Witty as the tunes are, they're nearly eclipsed by the even more hilarious between-song skits, which poke holes in the fabric of every hip-hop convention.

Those Legendary Shack-Shakers, Cockadoodledon't (Bloodshot): This frenetic Nashville country-punk outfit floored me a couple of months ago at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Tex. And while hearing them on plastic can't match seeing them in the flesh-you miss the sight of wiry, flame-haired singer Col. J.D. Wilkes projectile-blowing snot into the crowd, for one thing-what's left behind is still plenty potent. Standouts: the demented polka "Help Me From My Brain" and Col. Wilkes' molten harmonica playing on an ace cover of Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips."

Ralph Carney, This Is! (Black Beauty): Sideman to Tom Waits and the B-52's, member of the recently reunited Tin Huey-who had a semi-hit in the early 80's with their copy of Robert Wyatt's version of the Monkees' rendition of Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer"-Ralph Carney (uncle of Patrick; see the Black Keys, above) is a multi-instrumentalist with an unusual definition of reality. This, his third album of completely self-generated material, features zany forays into boho jazz ("Jug Gland Music"), synth-pop ("Heckraiser") and back-porch country ("Man Don't Come"). My favorite: the loping "Swamp Horse," on which Mr. Carney sings repeatedly about being "sucked dry of my impurities-you know what I mean."

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever to Tell (Interscope): Various members of Rock Critics Far-From-Anonymous have joined together in proclaiming New York's Yeah Yeah Yeahs the newest members of their pantheon. You can understand why. The band's endearingly rough-edged songs carry a nasty sexual charge, and front woman Karen O's yelps and growls suggest a tough-chick cross between Chrissie Hynde and Lydia Lunch. Fun? Sure. Derivative as hell? Double sure. The salvation of rock as we thought we knew it? No way. Fever to Tell may be a diverting listen, but compared to the music that so obviously influenced it-Siouxsie & the Banshees, say, or Gang of Four-it's minor stuff.

Blur, Think Tank (Virgin): Once upon a time, Blur's leader Damon Albarn wrote clever, concise story songs in the tradition of the Beatles and the Kinks. These days, he can't be bothered. To be fair, the move from the Brit popcraft of Blur's mid-90's heyday to the tripped-out soundscapes of more recent times has opened musical doors for the band; the off-center groove of Think Tank 's opening track, "Ambulance"-at first baffling, then beguiling-wouldn't have been attempted in earlier eras. But it's dispiriting to hear Mr. Albarn, a past master of the character sketch, turn into yet another lazy rock-star lyricist. To quote only one example, this from "Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club": "The desert needs a beer / But if we go and blow it up / Then we will disappear." Harsh, dude.

3. Forget

(Put the CD Down and Back Away)

Madonna, American Life (Warner Bros.): Is it just me, or is there something horribly wrong about Madonna strumming an acoustic guitar? Actually, the general folk-meets-disco vibe here is appealing, though unoriginal-Mrs. Ritchie's going over the same ground she covered on her last disc. But the real horror is what the slick sonics are supporting: rock-star lyrics that are lazy (see Blur, above) and shallow. Take this stunning insight from "Love Profusion": "And I know I can feel bad / When I get in a bad mood." Maybe she's putting us on, but it sure sounds like she means every word. Which puts American Life within striking distance of "so bad it's good" territory"-but not close enough.

Pete Yorn, Day I Forgot (Columbia): On his ear-grabbing 2001 debut, Musicforthemorningafter , Mr. Yorn successfully merged the two sides of his nature: tough indie-rocker and sensitive singer/songwriter. He tries that trick again here, but what he comes up with is a big snore. A couple of tunes-the delicate "Turn of the Century" and the taut, up-tempo "Burrito"-show what Mr. Yorn can do when roused from his lethargy. Too bad the rest is sound-alike mush.

Lisa Marie Presley, To Whom It May Concern (Capitol): It's definitely in the genes. Ms. Presley, like her famous father, has a great rock 'n' roll voice-deep, husky and forceful. Unfortunately, she's also like Elvis in that she doesn't rock out enough. Instead, she wastes her pipes on turgid, overproduced power ballads that try to make up for their lack of oomph by using lots of cuss words, a tired gimmick that would also have embarrassed Ms. Presley's dad, who-whatever he may have been doing behind the walls of Graceland-kept his lyrics clean. No, thankyouverymuch.