The Go! Team

Thunder, Lightning, Strike (Memphis Industries)

Call it puppy love, but on first hearing the Go! Team's amazing single "Ladyflash," I thought I'd pretty much just rediscovered music. As pop songs go, it's flawless. Before it even reaches the one-minute mark, "Ladyflash" traverses all manner of genres with aplomb and wit, delicately layering party hip-hop, a touch of AM Gold folk rock, and honey-dripping Motown vocals on top of a guitar riff blatantly lifted from Archie Bell and the Drells' "Tighten Up" (one of the most infectious soul-R&B numbers ever). It's chocolate and soda and ice cream and popcorn and pizza all whipped together, and fuck, does it taste good. Opening with "Panther Dash," which has the makings of a '90s-era Britpop classic, Thunder, Lightning, Strike at first seems the perfect nominee – unlike so many past candidates – for the UK's coveted Mercury Prize, NME hyperbole notwithstanding.

But keep listening and the lively setup that's so masterfully arranged on the first two tracks gives way to the floppy and unimaginative "Feelgood by Numbers," a pastiche of Peanuts-style piano and Belle and Sebastian-imbued songwriting that isn't even as clever as its name. Soon, nearly every track to follow takes on the same poorly thought-out mishmash aesthetic, tiredly yielding fewer and fewer results until one could almost mistake tracks like "Get It Together" and "Bottle Rocket" for lost bits of White Town's or Primitive Radio Gods' toe jam. Is it really that bad, you ask? Maybe not, as Team leader Ian Parton and his mates hit a mildly interesting chord or two closer to the end, but that initial drop-off after the disc's first glorious seven minutes is quite a drastic fall, and one you probably don't want to make without LimeWire or Soulseek there to cushion you. The Go! Team plays Sun/23, Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-6000. (Ken Taylor)

Danger Doom

The Mouse and the Mask (Epitaph)

It's only a matter of time before the world recognizes and celebrates the magnificence of MF Doom. This collaboration with Grey Album maestro Danger Mouse ought to accelerate the supervillain's journey from underground juggernaut to mainstream MC. A concept album of sorts, The Mouse and the Mask is a home run with lots of assets, including printed lyrics. All Doom albums should come with printed lyrics so we can confirm that he actually just said "The block was hot peppered/ Shepherd, leading the sheeps out to slaughter/ Kept your soul and repped it, every time he saw ya."

The record's adventures take place in the universe of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, a late-night group of shows including masterpieces like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sea Lab 2021, The Brak Show, and Harvey Birdman. Characters appear on the record in various ways: Brak and Meatwad spit rhymes, Space Ghost reprimands Danger Doom for wanting their own show, and Master Shake leaves desperate voice mails hoping to get a guest MC spot on the album. If guest spots from today's greatest cartoon characters weren't enough, Ghostface Killah joins Doom on "The Mask." His first rhyme is "The day I took my mask off my face was missing for two days." A true master. Keep an eye out for a Ghostface-and-Doom collabo record and tracks produced by Doom on Ghost's upcoming Def Jam record. Other guests on The Mouse and the Mask include Talib Kweli and Cee-Lo, who is also teaming up with Danger Mouse on music that will be released under the excellent name Gnarls Barkley. "A.T.H.F.," a song explaining the characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, is an album highlight. How Doom pulled that off without sounding corny is a mystery. The bouncy "Bada Bing" closes the album out as Doom packs pop-cultural references into his trademark meandering rhymes. Could Kool Moe Dee have rhymed about Three's Company back in the day? Maybe. "Wild Wild West" was a great song. (Nate Denver)

American Analog Set

Set Free (Arts and Crafts)

When a band continues to make the same wonderfully languid record, at what point does the repetition become less a source of comfort than one of ho-hum predictability? For American Analog Set, the answer lies at the decade mark. With Set Free, its sixth album since its formation, in 1995, the Austin quintet sticks so frustratingly close to the same formula – hushed stoner-pop hymns capable of filling a dozen sequels to the Garden State soundtrack – that it's practically impossible not to think we've heard it all before. And really, for all intents and purposes, we have. Nothing here would've sounded out of place on any of the band's other releases. Innovation, it seems, isn't of the utmost importance for AmAnSet.

To be fair it's easy to take a band this exquisite for granted. But even if Set Free's less impressive moments are still quite good, the problem is that the album ultimately sounds like a slightly inferior imitation of its predecessors. Not a single song approaches the lite-pop perfection of earlier efforts like "Punk as Fuck" or "Hard to Find," giving the impression the group is simply treading water, not improving, with age. And while many die-hard fans will find this enough to keep them coming back – after all, AmAnSet on autopilot still means there are several moments of striking beauty – everyone else might want to just give their favorite AmAnSet album another spin. American Analog Set perform Oct. 29 and 30, Bottom of the Hill, SF. (415) 621-4455. (Jimmy Draper)

Gretchen Wilson

All Jacked Up (Sony Nashville)

Good-time gal Gretchen Wilson is currently the most interesting woman in mainstream country music – even if Kid Rock keeps popping up in her videos and she refuses to crack a smile in any of her publicity photos. Her new album, All Jacked Up, kicks off with the raucous title track, a familiar echo of the Redneck Woman's breakout hit, complete with shout-along chorus. Wilson flaunts her proud-to-be-rowdy persona at every opportunity, and while it's no doubt a wee bit manufactured, she's at least got the colorful life history to back up her 'tude (detailed on the autobiographical "Proud to Be a Bartender" – a far less schticky ode to her roots than, say, Faith Hill's "Mississippi Girl"). She's also got the pipes to support All Jacked Up's forays into balladry ("He Ain't Even Cold Yet") without slipping into melismatic trills, though the fun of this album clearly lies in its more upbeat tracks.

"One Bud Wiser" is a clever shout-out to George Jones, both lyrically and stylistically; the honky-tonker "Skoal Ring" describes the mismatched matchup between two tobacco-lovin' lovers. The record does hit some false notes: "California Girls," a kind of rebuttal to the Beach Boys ("Ain't you glad we ain't all California girls?"), includes a dis of Paris Hilton, the most obvious target in the history of obvious targets; "Raining on Me" incorporates a string of clichés; and her duet with Merle Haggard, "Politically Uncorrect," rings false – how can you complain your flag-loving point of view "gets no respect" when that very perspective is in the Oval Office these days? (Vocally, however, the two are top-notch together.) All is forgiven by album's end, however, with a stripped-down hidden track, a surprising showcase of Wilson's jazzy, bluesy versatility. (Cheryl Eddy)