record reviews

THE BLACK EYED PEAS

Album: “The Beginning” (Interscope)

Grade: C

Dealing with the Black Eyed Peas’ dominance of pop radio is like planning for earthquakes in Los Angeles. There’s no use in protesting about either anymore. You can stock up on supplies and map an escape route for your family, but each is a geologic fact, and you might as well accept the inevitability.

With the Peas’ latest, “The Beginning,” the Big One that will topple freeways is “The Time [Dirty Bit],” a typically house-jacking club track that so flagrantly bites the chorus of “[I’ve Had] The Time of My Life” from “Dirty Dancing” that it has a kind of post-authorial genius. Consider it a musical Snuggie for tottering party girls — it will feel marvelous in the cold, drunken, lonely hours of the night.

But complaining about such is like lamenting the rise of global capitalism. There is no viable alternative anymore. The better challenge is to find the pearls of techno-caveman beauty in the coke-nose vocal tweaks of “XOXOXO” or the Daft Punk aspirations of “The Best One Yet [The Boy].” They have a song called “Love You Long Time,” for goodness sake. That’s all the Peas want to do, and they will not be ignored.

—August Brown, Los Angeles Times

KID ROCK

Album: “Born Free” (Atlantic)

Grade: B

Reportedly born of conversations between the Kid and uber-producer Rick Rubin, “Born Free” is meant to show off Rock’s lyrical love for his hard-luck hometown, Detroit. But the album also finds Rock (like Rubin) transitioning away from metal-crunching hip-hop and his usual boyish brand of mussed-up, self-referential cussin’ and sputtering. They’ve replaced much of Rock’s raucous backing ensemble, Twisted Brown Truckers, with studio vets. They’ve also emphasized the singer’s classic-rock affection for a sound as smooth as barrel-aged bourbon on languidly pastoral country-blues cuts such as “Purple Sky.” Rock sneaks in lowdown, dirty riff-rock (“God Bless Saturday”) and keening hillbilly hip-hop (“Care,” with Martina McBride and T.I.). But mostly there’s reverence for home (“Flying High”) and hometown heroes such as Bob Seger, whose rugged AOR inspiration ripples throughout. Kid even manages to find respect for his own voice as he croons low and sultry on “When It Rains” and angelically high on “For the First Time in a Long Time.” It’s a fine album — four stars for most, three for the Kid.

—A.D. Amorosi, Philadelphia Inquirer

TOBY KEITH

Album: “Bullets in the Gun” (Show Dog/Universal)

Grade: B

His blustery exploitation of 9/11 and the Dixie Chicks controversy sometimes obscured the fact that Toby Keith can be a very good country singer and songwriter. In recent years, his output has been uneven, but on “Bullets in the Gun,” the good ol’ boy is, indeed, very good. It just may be his best album.

The lead-off title track is a headlong, outlaws-on-the-lam saga reminiscent of Robert Earl Keen’s “The Road Goes on Forever,” and “Drive It on Home” is a rocking trucking song. But Keith really excels here on ballads and midtempo numbers that delve into matters of the heart, whether it’s the straight-up ache of “In a Couple of Days,” the false bravado of “Think About You All the Time,” or the battle-scarred resilience of “Ain’t Breakin’ Nothin’.” And you know Keith is at the top of his game when he can pull off “Get Out of My Car.” The singer plays a lecherous creep, but it’s all tongue-in-cheek — and the joke ends up being on him.

— Nick Cristiano, Philadelphia Inquirer

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE

Album: “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys”

Grade: A

If the last My Chemical Romance album, “The Black Parade,” the stunningly effective concept album dealing with death, was a punctuation mark, it would have been a period.

Its new concept album, “Danger Days: The True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys” (Reprise), is an exclamation point. Big! Bright! Loud! Wheeeee!

In “Danger Days,” MCR’s new alter egos are The Fabulous Killjoys, a gang of superheroes fighting alien crime and living on the edge comic-book style. Instead of the “Black Parade” slow crawl to death, the Killjoys are moving at high speeds.

The first single, “Na Na Na,” sounds like it was built for driving fast on an empty freeway with its hard-charging guitar riffs and its scream-along chorus. If the revved-up glam rock of “Party Poison” and “Vampire Money,” which sounds like T. Rex crossed with The Sex Pistols, doesn’t get you shouting, it may be too late for you.

“Danger Days” combines the feeling of living with no regrets and the extraordinary workmanship that doesn’t require any, creating instant, well-deserved success.

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday

NE-YO

Album: “Libra Scale”

Grade: B+

OK, so the back story for Ne-Yo’s fourth album, “Libra Scale” (Compound/Def Jam), is that he and his friends are garbagemen who are granted special powers to become a group of crime-fighting superheroes called The Gentlemen.

Really. There’s a Stan Lee comic book and everything.

It’s an interesting concept, though a more fitting one would probably be where the talented songwriter channels his respect for Michael Jackson into a collection that honors him in the best way possible.

While “One in a Million” calls to mind the R&B ease of “Remember the Time,” and “Champagne Life” feels like it could have come from the “Invincible” days, it’s the update of the “Off the Wall”-era disco on “Cause I Said So” that should make the biggest impact, along with the thrilling Euro-dance smash “Beautiful Monster.”

— Glenn Gamboa, Long Island Newsday