M.I.A.: /\/\/\Y/\ (N.E.E.T./Interscope) It struck me a few years ago that the innate talent young teens had with sending text messages--instinctively grasping which key needed to be pressed once, twice or three times in order to call up a specific letter of the alphabet--was remarkable but somehow sad, in that that dated technology would soon be rendered useless--as it already has--and the portion of their brain that controlled that motor skill might've been better utilized learning French, Bulgarian, or playing Scrabble! And so it is that rabidly political Sri Lankan goddess M.I.A. has created an album that in years to come will be pronounced as often as that old English band who recorded the semi-hit "Doot Doot," whose name was originally an odd graphic squiggle and later changed to the more phonetically pleasing Freuer, long after anyone would care! That said, I'd be the first to admit that war is bad, peace is good, killing is wrong, and loving is right, and that M.I.A.--who as a very pregnant onstage dancer is hard to beat--is one hep, right-on babe! Plus, I hear she's loaded!.

Crowded House: Intriguer (Fantasy/Concord) I was commenting just last week, after reading an interesting magazine piece--an intriguer, you might say--to my good friend Steve, who shares just enough of his private life with me to keep me guessing--an intriguer, you might say--that I knew just the album he needed to hear that would completely make his week...but I couldn't yet tell him its name! An intriguer, you might say! Was it this brand new Crowded House album, the follow-up the much-loved band's 2007 reunion Time On Earth? Was it the brand new Korn album? Or was it fact no album at all? Had the time on Earth when he could literally enjoy an album as opposed to dwelling on his mortality shrunk to near-nothingness, and was I merely humoring him? Nope! It was the new Fat Joe album, but that's not due for a couple of weeks! Anyway, this isn't bad, either!.

Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse: Dark Night Of The Soul (Capitol) Like Casper and Nightmare, Little Dot and Little Lotta, and Huey, Dewey and Louie, Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse are heroic figures whose artistic endeavors please many--especially those young and impressionable--and whose names roll off the tongue significantly smoother than might, say, Louie Sleagle and Noodles Fagen or, more to the point, Brian Burton and Mark Linkous! And while this new album--the last by the late Linkous--features an impressive batch of costars, including the Flaming Lips, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega and members of the Strokes, Pixies and Grandaddy, and is arty to the max for sure, I'm still not 100 percent convinced it's not a modern-day version of Jeff Wayne's 1978 concept album The War Of The Worlds! Of course, in my heart of hearts, I never thought Wayne would be the sort of artist who'd stick in a small paper note warning album buyers that unless they told all their friends to also buy the album, that big hand on the album cover would crush that poor little sheep to pulp merely because it could! Back then people were a lot more mellow!