As is perhaps inevitable with any band that's built a 15-year career and an eight-album discography, fans have been grousing that "Weezer should go back to being Weezer" for years now. With its last release in 2008, its third self-titled disc or "the Red Album," the alt-era survivors and emo progenitors made a partial detour from the arena rock of recent years to return to the willfully naïve, exuberantly bouncy, heart-on-sleeve pop of their first self-titled disc and 1994 debut--though even gems such as "Heart Songs" weren't enough to please the grousers.

The only thing that could make them happy, it seems, would be "Pinkerton, Part 2." But bandleader and primary songwriter River Cuomo would be the first to tell you he could never really return to the troubled period of his life that produced that uniquely soul-baring epic, even if he wanted to.

With the wonderfully titled "Raditude," Cuomo appears to have stopped worrying about his history and fan base and begun to simply indulge his love for and mastery of pop song craft, in particular as it's practiced on the pop charts circa 2009. Though his nasal voice and the band's essential guitar-bass-drums attack will always mark his latest collection of songs as Weezer product, Cuomo could well have sold some of this material to, say, Lady Gaga (the band has been covering her "Poker Face" live of late) or any number of current hip-hop, R&B or pop chart-toppers (Cuomo also wrote a tune for Katy Perry). Guest producers include Polow Da Don,; Weezer has fleshed out and glossed up the poignant and brilliant "Can't Stop Partying," a collaboration with Jermaine Dupri first heard on a 2008 demos collection, with a much snazzier groove and a cameo by Lil Wayne (Weezer and Weezy, side by side!) and "I'm Your Daddy" is the best R. Kelly song that Kelly never wrote.

Of course, Weezer being Weezer, there also are some songs that couldn't have been done anyone else, in particular "(If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To" and "Put Me Back Together," as well as a mind-boggling detour or two, including the sitar-powered Bollywood jam, "Love Is the Answer." It all combines to make what may be the most uneven and inconsistent album of the group's career, yet it also is one of its most entertaining and just plain fun.

One of the most exciting bands to emerge in the new millennium, the Strokes have spent much of the time since their 2001 debut "Is This It" lowering the expectations set by that classically New York, Velvet Underground-influenced explosion of droning melodies, speed-fueled guitars and runaway subway train rhythms. "Room on Fire" (2003) and "First Impressions of Earth" (2006) were hardly dismal efforts, but neither expanded the basic formula the way the Velvets continually stretched the boundaries of their sound, and the wait for album number four has officially grown interminable as band members are torn by the constant distractions of various solo projects.

Now the group's voice, primary songwriter and laidback if undeniable leader has given us his solo bow, a concise, eight-track, 40-minute set that takes its name from an Oscar Wilde essay ("Phrases and Philosophies for Use of the Young") and which veers far and wide for the sort of stylistic diversity sorely missing in the Strokes. Unfortunately, the results only make a fan miss that band more.

Julian Casablancas' delightfully laconic vocals remain as appealing as ever, and he still flaunts an unerring ear for hooks so casual and seemingly effortless you forget how infectious they are. These talents shine on the opening "Out of the Blue" and "Left & Right in the Dark," as well as the dark but frenetic "River of Brake Lights." But these suffer from the sterile computer rhythms; why use a drum machine when you have one of the greatest human rhythm machines in rock with Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti?

Elsewhere, though memorable melodies still abound, Casablancas sounds painfully out of his element--a New Yorker dressed head to toe in black leather stranded on a sunny beach. Witness the misguided lo-fi dance track "11th Dimension," the awkward computer-orchestrated ballad "Glass" or the bizarre drunken blues/uptight freak-folk of "Ludlow St." One wishes that producers Jason Lader and Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes) would have provided a bit more guidance. But one wishes even more for the return of Casablancas' old prep school mates.

At a time when the horrors of reality easily trump the vivid imaginations of the most wicked fantasists, what is a band that regularly traffics in gore and blasphemy to do? Unsurprisingly, Slayer's 10th studio album is among the most overtly political of its long and punishing career, with songs such as the title track, "Hate Worldwide," "Public Display of Dismemberment," "Americon" and "Not of This God," and four different CD covers that, when combined, create a map of the world covered in blood and bones.

Of course, as the many devoted fans of this most extreme and influential of thrash bands will cheerfully testify, the core of its appeal has never been the lyrics that raise the ire of blue bloods; those just help set the mood for one of the most unrelentingly powerful sounds in rock. And amid rumors of its impending retirement from live performance (apparently false) and with hardly any of the new tunes written before the band entered the studio (a departure from its usual methodology), Slayer incorporated more of the hardcore punk influence than it's displayed since the mid '80s, attacking with an undiminished fury belying the fact that it's fast approaching the third decade of its career.

How can these gents defy the inevitable aging process that has sidelined so many other monstrous metal bands? Perhaps steel-throated bassist-vocalist Tom Araya is offering a clue when he howls about "drinking blood for vanity" in "Beauty Through Order," though he swears this pleasant ditty actually is about "the first known female serial killer," Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who was said to be fond of bathing in the blood of virgins. In any event, like the rest of this disc, the song will send fans of "Twilight" and "The Vampire Diaries" running in horror, and the Slayer faithful wouldn't have it any other way.

When British ingénue Joss Stone first hit the music scene, she was a welcome change of pace from the many other teen pop princesses. For one, she actually could sing, with a smoky, soulful voice that belied her age. For another, she showed a genuine affinity for old-school R&B, even as the producers of her first two albums, "The Soul Sessions" (2003) and "Mind, Body & Soul" (2004), did their best to obscure it with an overly pristine sound pandering to commercial gloss.

Like so many of her peers, however--see also: Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson--the now 22-year-old Stone began to buck against the system that had fostered her, and her frustrations are given full voice on her fourth studio effort, which she claims to have written and recorded in about a week in her native Devon. The controversial cover art depicts her crammed into a cage with limbs numbered like the cuts on a chart in a butcher's shop, while the first single, "Free Me," spells out her gripes with her music-industry oppressors. "Don't tell me that I won't/I will," she sings with throaty defiance. "Don't tell me that I'm not/I am/Don't tell me that my master plan/Ain't coming through."

Noble sentiments, to be sure, but the problem is that Stone doesn't really have a master plan, or the discerning ear to tell her best moments (the more fiery, up-tempo, Aretha-lite grooves) from her worst (the schlocky slow jams, the worst of which, a dreadful cover of the Nat King Cole standard "L-O-V-E," thankfully was cut from the American edition of this album). She inexplicably reteams with two of the producers, Jonathan Shorten and Connor Reeves, responsible for her earlier, watered-down sounds; she trots out the pointless celebrity cameos (Jeff Beck, Sheila E., Nas and David Sanborn, though Raphael Saadiq is a welcome presence), and most of all, she seems more than a bit hypocritical railing against the system while remaining in its ranks and issuing this disc as yet another exclusive corporate commodity, available only through Target and iTunes.

"The world is a vampire," Billy Corgan sang back in the mid-'90s, but the Great Pumpkin was ahead of his time: These days, it's impossible to sit in front of a television or movie screen without catching some glimpse of the undead--now all unnaturally beautiful teens or twentysomethings--set to appropriately moody post-alternative dinner music. No one has made these pairings more skillfully, however, than that master musical sommelier, Chicago native Alexandra Patsavas, the in-demand music supervisor who scores "Grey's Anatomy" and "Gossip Girl," and now the second installment of "The Twilight Saga," the new film "New Moon."

It's a testament to both Patsavas' reputation as a tastemaker and the massive popularity of all things "Twilight" that the soundtrack includes some real coups, with artists who rarely contribute to this sort of project, including a fabulously creepy solo track from Radiohead's Thom Yorke; inspired collaborations between indie darlings Bon Iver and St. Vincent ("Roslyn") and Grizzly Bear and Victoria Legrand of Beach House ("Slow Life"), and worthy contributions from Death Cab for Cutie, Lykke Li, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and the Killers, whose mix of glam-rock bombast is leavened with just the right touch of self-parody here on "A White Demon Love Song."

Even if you think tween vampire flicks suck, there are plenty of good moments here to download for your Halloween party. Just be sure not to listen in the sunlight.

As their protégés in Phoenix take America by storm with a more upbeat, dance-oriented slant on the atmospheric French synth-pop that they pioneered, it would be easy to confine studio wizards Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin to the dustbin of history: "Love 2" is their sixth studio album, and like their other releases, it doesn't measure up to their finest moment, the 1998 masterpiece "Moon Safari."

How is this Air album different from all the others? Well, it's the first the duo has produced on its own at its new studio, Atlas, and the first to feature a flesh and blood drummer, Joey Waronker. But that's it. Otherwise, we have the usual trance/sleep-inducing grooves, the familiar backgrounds of retro/futuristic analog synthesizer drones, washes and bleeps and echo-laden guitars, and those oh-so-French Serge Gainsbourg-on-'ludes spoken-sung vocals. And it's all beginning to sound pretty tired.

Yet while there are some ultra-disposable toss-offs here--chief among them the gently jaunty but exceedingly slight "Love," with lyrics that feature nothing but that word repeated again and again until you start to hate it--there are just enough strong tunes to reward fans' loyalty, including the instrumentals "Eat My Beat" and "Tropical Disease." These are enough to save Air from the accusation that it's run out of steam, but they do suggest the group should perhaps confine itself in the future to soundtracks such as the one it crafted for "The Virgin Suicides" in 2000.

Though it may seem like the most unlikely endeavor, longtime fans of rock's most famous bard must applaud the notion of Robert Allen Zimmerman making a Christmas album--that is, at least if you appreciate the wickedly sarcastic sense of humor and love of surrealism that have always been a strain in Bob Dylan's work.

This is, after all, the man whose autobiography lauds old-time wrestler Gorgeous George and ukulele-strumming Tiny Tim as two of his biggest inspirations, and who loves to mess with our notion of his status as the Voice of a Generation with the occasional mind-boggling detour like making a Victoria's Secret commercial.

Conceptually, then, "Christmas in the Heart" is a success, simply because it's so unexpected and downright bizarre. You might think that as he enters the sixth decade of his career, with 34 studio albums and countless live recordings to his credit, Dylan couldn't come up with anything to surprise us anymore. Well, he just found something.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the music, the album is a complete failure.

From the faux-Currier and Ives cover art to the annoyingly precious arrangements, and from the beyond-predictable choice of tired holiday chestnuts to the chorus of backing vocalists who sound as if they could be the surviving members of the King Family, Dylan plays things beyond straight, adhering to the syrupy, schlocky pop sounds of the pre-rock era that also provided the worst moments on his recent albums.

Never a conventionally good singer, of late, Dylan's once powerful croak has become more of a raspy wheeze. But his delivery is the real problem.

When the star stumbles through "I'll Be Home for Christmas," he sounds like the family's disinherited black sheep embarrassment, delivering the sentiment as a threat rather than a promise. In "Winter Wonderland," when that treacly chorus coos, "We'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman," he sounds like a psychotic as he answers, "Until the other kids all knock him down!" And by the time he starts slaughtering the familiar Latin refrain of "Adeste fideles"--"Venite adoremus Dominum" becomes, no kidding, "Benito adore-a-moose domino!"--you don't know whether to wince or guffaw.

If the proceeds of this album weren't being donated to charities dedicated to easing world hunger, you might think it was all a big put-on. Regardless, fans would be well advised to make a donation of their own and spare themselves this holiday torture.

Of the many generational gaps and stylistic schisms that fester as rock rolls through its sixth decade--from those who'll forever favor Elvis over the Beatles to those who'd champion Britney over Madonna--none illustrates a more rigid, unforgiveable and unbridgeable divide than the one between the legions who were brainwashed as youth into becoming members of the Kiss Army, seduced by its fire-belching cartoon reduction of true heavy-metal hell-raising, and the rest of us who cannot abide the simplistic stomping, redundant riffing and brain-dead sexism of Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and their current greasepaint-wearing cohorts even as satire or a guilty pleasure.

Such is our distaste for these pandering huckster boors that we still hold it against Paul Westerberg and the Replacements for covering "Black Diamond" on the otherwise flawless "Let It Be" (1984).

For us skeptics, it makes perfect sense that for their first album of new Kiss material in 12 years, Simmons (age 60) and Stanley (57) have wound up with an exclusive deal at a big-box retailer that shares its charmless, vulgar, neo-fascistic "bigger is better" aesthetic, neatly summed up here--and repeated for the umpteenth time over the last 35 years--in the new track "Never Enough," which finds Stanley wailing, "Give me life for the takin'/Give me love 'til I'm shakin'/Give me rules just for breakin'/'Cause it's never enough! Never enough! Never enough!"

Actually, it was enough with "Destroyer" way back in 1976, the point at which Bob Ezrin's bombastic melodrama forever blurred inside-joke and shameless self-parody, as the packaging of this release makes clear. In addition to a CD of the 11 new tracks--more titles that tell you all you need to know: "All for the Glory," "Danger Us" and "I'm An Animal"--the bargain-priced three-disc package also includes a live DVD and a greatest-hits collection, though concert staples such as "Detroit Rock City," "Shout It Out Loud" and, yes, "Black Diamond" all have been re-recorded by the unremarkable current lineup completed by Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer and lacking the original "spaceman" guitarist Ace Frehley and Peter Criss, a.k.a. the drummer who sang "Beth," who departed for the most recent times in 2003 and 2004, respectively.

As soggy and soulless as these new renditions of alleged Kiss classics are, even these are preferable to the trite and formulaic new product of the Kiss Corporation circa 2009. Never enough? More like, "Not again--please!"

Kiss performs at the United Center at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 6. Tickets range from $18.50 to $125--with a special "KISS Meet & Greet Experience" priced at $995--via www.ticketmaster.com, (312) 559-1212.

The 12th studio album from Oklahoma's fabulous Flaming Lips represents the sort of radical surprise and unexpected departure that was commonplace from these long-running psychedelic rockers through the first two acts of their career, from their origins as a sort of "Replacements on acid" during the indie-rock '80s through their hard-hitting mainstream breakthrough in the alternative-rock heyday of the'90s. But since their reinvention as a digital orchestral-pop band with "The Soft Bulletin" in 1999, they've become both less prolific and more predictable, with each new release boasting flashes of brilliance but ultimately taking a backseat to their increasingly shtick-filled low-budget multi-media stage shows.

Simply put, longtime fans were growing increasingly impatient waiting for the Lips to quit being cute, retire the armies of plushies, the space bubble and the group sing-alongs on "Happy Birthday," and finally hit us with some truly twisted, thoroughly mind-blowing rock 'n' roll again a la the early epic "One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning."

"Embryonic" is not entirely successful in this regard--it's not nearly in the same league as "In a Priest Driven Ambulance" (1990) or "Transmissions from the Satellite Heart" (1993)--but it is freakier, more expansive, more willfully noncommercial and more surprising than anything Wayne Coyne and company have given us in 14 years.

Favoring space-jazz rhythms that split the difference between electric Miles Davis and Krautrockers Can, with wild bursts of distorted guitar that evoke gonzo Frank Zappa crossed with punked-out mid-period Pink Floyd, the 18 tracks comprise what would have been a great headphone-friendly double album back in the day. Songs such as "I Can Be A Frog" (featuring delightful background animal yelps from Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's), "Scorpio Sword" and "Sagittarius Silver Announcement" are about creating a surreal and otherworldly mood rather than playing to the crowd that loves to sing along to "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1." The mistake the Lips made with their last album, "At War with the Mystics" (2006) was trying to split the difference; here, they're unapologetically weird once more.

How will the festival crowd that has come to think of this group as the ultimate party band react to this material? And will the group boldly push further into this stratosphere in concert, or will it just throw a few hints of these sounds into the increasingly hoary stage show? (That's what it did at the Pitchfork Music Festival last summer, incorporating the catchiest of the new tracks--"Convinced of the Hex" and "Silver Trembling Hands"--amid the expected greatest hits.) The answers to those questions have to wait until the group's next U.S. tour in the Spring. Meanwhile, it's given us new cause to dust off the bong and the blacklight, and that's cause to celebrate.

The fourth album and major-label debut by rural Arkansas-to-Olympia, Wash. transplants the Gossip has been one of the most anticipated releases of the last few years: The irrepressible dance-punk trio broke out of the underground and achieved a measure of mainstream success with the undeniable grooves of "Standing in the Way of Control" (2005), and in the process, frontwoman Beth Ditto--a funny, flamboyant and endlessly quotable opponent of sexism, homophobia and sizism--has become a left-of-center star, recognized for her charming outrageousness as well as for possessing one of the most powerful and soulful voices to appear on the rock scene since the alternative era.

Unfortunately, en route to more exposure via the still sadly retrogressive major-label system, the Gossip was paired with superstar producer Rick Rubin, who's helmed recordings by artists ranging from Slayer to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Johnny Cash. With the latter, he wisely played a minimal role and simply paired the rock pioneer with good material and the most simple and direct of sounds, the better for him to shine. He should have taken a similar approach with Ditto and her bandmates, but the relatively minimal core of her vocals, the rhythmic guitar lines of Brace Paine and the propulsive drumming of Hannah Billie is needlessly polished and over-produced, cleansed of all of the grit of the band's live shows and robbed of almost all of its character.

There is clearly another set of solid Gossip material below the dated radio-friendly sheen that Rubin hoses all over these tunes, with tracks such as "Dimestore Diamond," "Heavy Cross" and "8th Wonder" struggling to escape the gloss. But in the end, too much of the character we've come to love about this band has been obscured, and the Gossip has to take some of the blame for being seduced--and declawed--by the star-making machine.

The Gossip performs at Metro, 3730 N. Clark, after opening sets by Post Honeymoon and Men starting at 9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 16. Tickets are $18 in advance, $20 at the door; visit www.metrochicago.com.