Britney Spears
In the Zone (Jive)

"Tired of being compared to damn Britney Spears," Pink bitched on 2001's multiplatinum M!ssundaztood. "She's so pretty, that just ain't me." But that's not exactly Spears anymore, either. Ever since the irreverent, refreshingly unrefined Pink liberated a legion of pop-tart puppets from their squeaky-clean straitjackets, everyone from Xtina to Avril has followed her anti-Britney lead – including Spears herself, who's been busy soiling her like-a-virgin image with boozy and floozy behavior now that it's fashionable. So, having ushered in a new era of pop modeled in her rabble-rousing image, what's a rebel grrrl like Pink to do?

For starters, take aim at the hangers-on. "You're telling everyone how different that you really are," the former nonblond tells the wanna-bes on her third and rowdiest album, Try This. "But it's been said before, so maybe you're not special after all." Pink really is different this time around, though, largely trading in her R&B and confessional dance rock for some fist-pumping punk vitriol courtesy of Rancid's Tim Armstrong. And the excellent results are exactly what pop needs: a woman bad-mouthing deadbeat boyfriends, storming the dance floor, and on the highlight "Oh My God," indulging in some "cootchie-coo" action with guest slut Peaches.

Peaches recently refused to collaborate with that damn Britney, but that didn't stop Spears from some lady-on-lady posturing of her own with Madonna at the MTV Video Music Awards. That pseudo-sexual awakening carries over to her awful fourth album, In the Zone, a clunky collection of dance anthems and banal, log-jammed hip-hop beats. No longer a girl, not yet a woman who can carry a tune, Spears baby talks, whispers, and purrs about her newfound appreciation for masturbation, casual sex, and getting skeezy under the strobe light. In the end, however, not even high-profile help from Maddy, Moby, and R. Kelly can keep In the Zone from sounding like just another desperately contrived, post-Pink marketing maneuver. (Jimmy Draper)

Okkervil River
Down the River of Golden Dreams (Jagjaguwar)

On Okkervil River's previous full-length, Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See (Jagjaguwar, 2002), lead singer Will Sheff threw rowdy fits of temper and angst all over the room. Verbal abuse, mourning, and the kind of love you should run from were all on the table for discussion. Though he calmed down for June's Acuarela split EP with sweet-voiced Julie Doiron, on which he came on sounding like a true, plaintive-voiced disciple of Oldham, I was still hoping for more heartfelt tantrums on Okkervil's third album, Down the River of Golden Dreams. Instead the band have mostly slowed to a contemplative pace, shown to best advantage on tracks like "The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion" and the sad and lovely "Maine Island Lovers."

There's plenty of nice songwriting here, like a line in "Velocity" in which Sheff creakily sings about loneliness and visions. But all in all, I think I prefer the band, and Sheff, in a state of breakdown, when they turn the orchestral effects – strings and organ and a small brass band – up to 11, when Sheff swerves off-center (and off-key). The best of these moments take place on "The War Criminal Rises and Speaks," which starts quietly enough with observations on the human heart, the media, and the day's bad habits, then rises to the title's impassioned monologue, only to fall into the same soft observations going nowhere all over again. Okkervil River play Sat/29, Hemlock Tavern, S.F. (415) 923-0923. (Lynn Rapoport)

Thrall
Lifer (Alternative Tentacles)

Those familiar with Mike Hard's work in classic Amphetamine Reptile Records noise band the God Bullies and on the first two Thrall records will be pleased, though probably not surprised, by Lifer's tales of paranoia, conspiracy theories, and condemnations of consumer culture that pound the temples like a rocking, not entirely unpleasant headache. "Jesus didn't die on the cross," Hard clues us in on the album's opener, "Path of Initiation." "He escaped to France and formed a cult. He made a living selling snake oil and writing science fiction novels."

Lifer's pound and lurch are liberally laced with samples of right-winger rants and UFO witness testimonials: "Americanism ... it has to be learned!" one particularly vitriolic fellow reminds us. Hard sings with an overblown religiosity, like a televangelist caught with his pants down, part preaching, part pleading. He beseeches the listener on "How Does It Feel?" to "walk with me, walk with me – I'll hold your hand," then asks how it feels "to know you're not alone." Under normal circumstances, pretty good, I suppose, but when Hard is your spiritual advisor, and it's his footsteps next to yours in the sand, that can get pretty ... uncomfortable. You're not alone. Sure, they're watching you right now.

Listening to Thrall is akin to reading Jim Knipfel's memoir, Quitting the Nairobi Trio, in that it gives you a pretty good feeling of what it's like to be locked up in a Midwestern mental hospital. Thrall perform Sun/30, Curve Bar, S.F. (415) 896-2286. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

Rufus Wainwright
Want One (DreamWorks)

Rufus Wainwright dwells in a lush, purple world of bittersweet merriment and melancholy beauty. There's rarely naked sentiment in his music – Wainwright thrives on conflicted emotion. Want One's glorious opener, "Oh What a World," for example, begins with carnivalesque tuba oompahs, then steadily builds with choral echoes and crashing cymbals. At the song's climax, Ravel's "Bolero" drops in and everything suddenly teeters on the edge of camp but never quite flips in. The baroque ballad shamelessly flirts with cheekiness, but it's so breathlessly beautiful that you hardly mind.

Want One follows this lead, lavishing you with velvet compositions about love and lust but always with fringes of self-mocking charm sewn on. On "Vibrate," Wainwright sings with self-aware sarcasm, "I tried to dance to Britney Spears / I guess I'm getting on in years," yet his chorus, "My phone's on vibrate / For you," is sung with a plaintive poignancy all the same. For purer, unadulterated emotion, turn to the simple, pretty "Natasha" or the scathing "Dinner at Eight," an Oedipal invective aimed at his famous father, folkie Loudon Wainwright III.

More so than Wainwright's first two excellent albums, Want One is steeped in intricate, gorgeous production that would make Brian Wilson proud. The title song is a mesmerizing mesh of overlaid guitar chords with just a sprinkling of vibraphone, while "Vicious" floats on panning electric piano bubbles. The album's most joyous moment comes on the cabaret-influenced "14th Street," which struts in on jangling piano spurs as Wainwright swaggers toward the chorus and belts with enough grandiose aplomb to light up Broadway. In this instance, everything about him screams "fabulous," and indeed, he, the song, and his album are just that. Rufus Wainwright plays Dec. 19, Warfield, S.F. (415) 421-TIXS. (Oliver Wang)

Black Box Recorder
Passionoia (One Little Indian)

Relentlessly sardonic, London's Black Box Recorder have always been easier to admire than enjoy. On 1998's England Made Me and 2000's Facts of Life (both Jetset), the chilly, electronic pop trio – Sarah Nixey, the Auteurs' Luke Haines, and former Jesus and Mary Chain drummer John Moore – juxtaposed shiny surfaces with dark humor and sly, class-conscious critiques of their homeland. But if that subversive quality gave the group depth, BBR ultimately came off as frustratingly inaccessible with their restrained, tastefully sparse music underscoring Nixey's ice-queen delivery. It was all part of their scathing social commentary, of course, but two albums full of such unsympathetic observations as "Life is unfair / Kill yourself or get over it" can feel as off-putting as the privileged class they satirized.

Passionoia, on the other hand, steers clear of its predecessors' studied detachment. Sounding like they're finally ready for fun, the group members let loose with disco beats, headier hooks, and warmer vocals that give their music a refreshing, previously unimaginable sense of inclusiveness. So while it's still immensely Brit-critical, the trio's tone now largely owes more to higher-energy numbers like "GSOH Q.E.D." and "Andrew Ridgley." "I was brought up to the sound of the synthesizer," Nixey enthuses on the latter. "I learned to dance to the beat of electronic drums." And as a euphoric tribute to the transcendent power of the sort of pop found on Passionoia, the song illustrates why the album isn't only BBR's best, but one of the year's best as well. (Draper)

Ying Yang Twins
Me and My Brother (TVT)

D Roc and Kaine may be named after the Taoist oppositional principals yin and yang, but it turns out they're pretty much all yang – that is to say, hot, sweaty, self-destructive, and aggressively male. That may sound like a nightmare to you, but I'll be damned if these latest stars from the "dirty South" – following on the heels of the Cash Money clique, Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boyz, and David Banner – don't make drunk and disorderly tracks sound so good.

Raw computer-drafted beats, horror-movie piano keys, and low-end bass pumps drive Me and My Brother forward, but it's the duo's gruff rapping style – with Kaine sounding something like Animal from the Muppets after drinking a bottle of NyQuil – that shifts this hoopty into high gear. Things get progressively more feral, culminating in the title track, on which the duo slur through lyrics that detail all their vices: Grey Goose vodka, weed smoking, fighting, women.

Obviously, the Twins don't make conscious rap; in fact, it's more likely to be unconscious. And if lyrics about drinking and driving and nagging women don't hit your politically correct defense button, then lines like "Bitch, please, I'm hotter than 400 degrees / The only time you use your mouth is when you on your knees" are guaranteed to ruffle your feathers. But if you like your party anthems as sweaty and gritty as Southern dirt, Ying Yang Twins deliver the bad medicine. (Vivian Host)

Superchunk
Cup of Sand (Merge)

Superchunk make it easier for the completist to catch up with the dizzying array of singles and comp tracks on Cup of Sand, their third bringing-it-all-together release after 1992's Tossing Seeds and 1995's Incidental Music. This time around it's a two-disc set, and the question for the discerning 'Chunk fan is, "What's here, and is it worth my 15 (or so) bucks?" Standouts are the lurking, plodding bass line and spooky organ of "The Mine Has Been Returned to Its Original Owner"; the quiet, contemplative acoustic take of "Detroit Has a Skyline"; the rumble and shake of "Clover"; and the extraordinarily fun covers of Adam and the Ants' bondage classic "Beat My Guest" and Bowie's "Scary Monsters," which, of course, isn't all that scary when Mac McCaughan sings it. The jazzy, romantic stroll during a light drizzle, "Sexy Ankles," sounds like a track from Mac's side band, Portastatic. "Don't mistake my dirty mind for lust," he croons.

Pick a song at random from either CD and, if you're a fan, it'll be a pretty damned enjoyable one. So I'm going to answer the second part of my question for the discerning 'Chunk fan by claiming that there is no such thing as a discerning 'Chunk fan. I never thought I'd have recourse to the banality of "It's all good," but in the case of the Chapel Hill, N.C., quartet, it really is. They've grown up some in the lucky 13 years since "Slack Motherfucker" took this job and shoved it. More colors have been added to the canvas, and they're worked in with a finer brush, much like in bass player Laura Ballance's cover paintings. (Davidson)

Pepe Deluxe
Beatitude (Emperor Norton)

Since their first appearance on Bomb Hip-Hop's Return of the DJ Vol. 2 in 1996, Finnish group Pepe Deluxe have lost their scratch-happy third member, DJ Slow, and become more interested in live instruments than in hip-hop's staple samples. Small wonder they called their second full-length Beatitude. It's a play on words intended to reflect their interest in both crate-digging and blissful sounds.

The 14 tracks on Beatitude are linked by a lazy, loungey tempo and also by mood. Whether Pepe Deluxe are plundering dashing South Asian exotica or retro '70s funk, a hazy, opium-scented happy cloud hangs over the studio, giving the tracks a surprising cohesiveness despite all the genre-switching. The use of a bevy of live instruments, from strings to brass to piano, also gives the album a richer sound and drives it further afield from the funk-sampling idiom that so many producers following DJ Shadow have stuck to.