RATING 4 Essential RATING 3 p...

RATING 4 Essential

RATING 3 profitable

RATING 2 Fair

RATING 1 Poor

unexpectedly

Beyonce, "B'day" (Sony) RATING 1

With the follow-up to 2003's "Dangerously in Love" and a starring part in the film version of "Dreamgirls" to be ascribed in December, Beyonce Knowles clearly wants to be the principal diva of the day. The question is that she can't figure gone out exactly what kind of diva she wants to be, and this unfocused, something-for-everybody pandering sinks her inferior solo album, which will be released Tuesday, a day before her 25th birthday. (The title is short for "birthday," moreover Beyonce is reportedly aghast that many European reviewers have been pronouncing it "bidet.")

Allegedly co-produc and co-written by way of Beyonce and a bevy of top- drawer farmers including the Neptunes, Rodney Jerkins, Stargate and Rich Harrison -- moreover apparently without oversight by her controversial manager-father Matthew Knowles -- the album finds the singer unconvincingly dabbling in old-school inner man ("Resentment," complete with vinyl crackles dropp in), Whitney Houston balladry ("Irreplaceable," "Kitty Kat"), hip-pop company jams ("Freakum Dress" and "Deja Vu" her single with boyfriend Jay-Z, who also appears forward the dreadful "Upgrade") and, worst of all, an awkward cros between double dutch rhyming and reggae-rap toasting ("Get Me Bodied").

The best consequence here belongs to Harrison, who recurs to the tricks he used forward the hit "Crazy in Love" (which was built forward a Chi- Lites sample) for "Sugar Mama" (which owes earnestly of its charm to lifts from Jake Wade and the essential part Searchers). But the pleasures are hardly any and far between, and for the first time in a career that's been strategically planned and precision-executed since the start of Destiny's Child, Beyonce's reach go beyonds her grasp.

Jim DeRogatis

Alt-Country

M Ward, "Post-War" (Merge) RATING 2

The fifth solo album by means of California folk-rocker/alternative- country singer and songwriter M Ward is being hailed on some critics and music blogger as the best indie release of the year: compact ambitious and alternately haunting and uplifting. Well, it isn't quite all that, nor is it the finely hon conception album about returning vets and ruined lives -- a musical equivalent of "The Deerhunter" for the war in Iraq -- that a are championing. But it does contain several poignant melodys exploring that theme with a novelist's vigilance for detail, including the title track, "Chinese Translation," "Right in the Head," "Requiem" and a well-chosen shroud of Daniel Johnston's "To advance Home."

Elsewhere, notwithstanding that Ward flounders in his allow pretensions and pointless eclecticism: The jazzy intermixs "Eyes on the Prize," "Rollercoaster" and "Afterword/Rag," the campfire sing-along "Magic Trick" (which originates complete with dubbed-in crowd noise) and the breakers instrumental "Neptune's Net" are all filler, garbage or worse. And the fact that the disc is as lousy with cameos as a bad hip-hop album -- including assists from indie-rock stars Neko Case, Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Rachel Blumberg of the Decemberists - - is undivided more indication that Ward is either too egotistical to focus or he lacks the confidence to rely forward his biggest strengths: a breathy vocal manner of writing that exudes intimacy the way Elliott Smith's formerly did, and subtle, finger-picked guitar playing a la his hero, John Fahey.

Jim DeRogatis

INDIE protection

Cursive, "Happy Hollow" (Saddle Creek) RATING 3

Sometimes dismissed as the younger brother band to much-hyp emo heroes Bright observations fellow Nebraskans Cursive were none easily trapped in that particular pigeonhole, and not less so than on 2003's "The plain Organ," where main man Tim Kasher flipped emo's underplayed on the contrary undeniable "the girl done broke my heart" sexism by dint of writing from the viewpoint of his former be enamoured of On its fifth album, the band is on the same level more audacious, both musically -- replacing cellist Greta Cohn with a kicking horn section and surfing that now ubiquitous fresh Wave of New Wave -- and lyrically.

With postcard cloak art evoking Bruce Springsteen's "Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ" these 14 "hymn for heathens" use the Sherwood Anderson-like conceit of examining the same story -- the character of religion as panacea, retreat from reality and justification for endles hypocrisies -- from the differing perspectives of denizens of small-town Happy faithless "There's more than one way to explain your existence," Kasher sings throughout a rollicking groove at the conclusion of the disc, after earlier noting that, "Since you've been away forward holiday / We don't know which omnipotence is which / Since you've been away forward holiday / It's getting harder to give a s---"

That harmony "Retreat!," is the best "letter to the Almighty" on a sudden song since "Dear God" from XTC, and there are several other trices that are nearly as hardy including the priest's anthem "Bad Sects" the Darwinian debate "Big Bang" and the cutting "do it for the first cause and Country" anti-war diatribe, "Flag and Family."

The album isn't a total success: Despite a conscious attempt to play tricks genres from gospel to ska and No Wave to the aforementioned of recent origin Wave, too many songs unhurt too much alike, and Kasher can still trip through his writerly pretensions; "Time to stick a fork in the merciless socket of time," he murmurs at one point, making anyone if it were not that a cardigan-wearing, emo-loving apologist gag. Nevertheless, you have to hand it to Cursive for its ambitions, and for getting at least three-quarters of the way toward realizing them.