Lindsay Lohan A Little More Personal (Raw) (Universal)
As the title suggests, Lindsay Lohan makes a fatal mistake on her second album: She tries to, like, express herself. The album de-emphasizes the (very) guilty pop pleasures of her 2004 debut in favor of leaden I-hate-you-Daddy laments such as "Confessions of a Broken Heart" and "My Innocence." Lohan has a much bigger -- though less distinctive -- voice than her sometime-pal Ashlee Simpson, but she sounds like a high school talent-show winner on the album's two classic-rock covers: a sprightly take on "I Want You to Want Me" and a karaoke-faithful version of "Edge of Seventeen." (BRIAN HIATT)
Lil' Wayne Tha Carter II (Cash Money/Universal)
Of all the Cash Money MC's who blew up in the Nineties, Lil' Wayne has grown the most -- understandably so, since he was just sixteen when he released his debut in 1999. Wayne's fifth album finds him in excellent lyrical command, whether he's dropping whimsical wordplay on "Grown Man" or solemn biography on the piano-tinged statement of purpose "Fly In." Made with relatively obscure Dirty South producers, Tha Carter II is overlong, but often thrilling: It works up soulful streetscapes ("The Mobb"), nimble reggae ("Mo Fire") and just plain hot synth-bounce ("Fireman"). Wayne sounds his best on brash bangers like "Money on My Mind," in which he gives a deliciously drawled ode to his pockets-filling mode: "I . . . fuckin' . . . love . . . it." (CHRISTIAN HOARD)
Don Omar Da Hitman Presents Reggaeton Latino (Machete Music/Universal)
Fusions of hip-hop and reggaeton -- its dancehall-inflected Latin cousin -- are becoming more common as reggaeton invades rap radio and pushes boundaries, with brassy Spanglish rhymes increasingly surrounded by boomy hooks, merengue and gunshot sound effects. This compilation finds Don Omar -- a Puerto Rican singer who sometimes comes off like reggaeton's Nate Dogg -- dropping soulful hooks, while some famous Americans and Latin MCs, such as Tego Calderon, bob, weave and provide sultry, popwise crooning over slicked-up islander beats. On the title track and the girl-sick "Scandalous," Omar's passionate, vaguely melancholy singing enriches the action-packed party of string stabs, shouted "hey!"s and hot rhymes from N.O.R.E., Fat Joe and Cuban Link. Some of the straighter love songs are snoozers but not Jennifer Lopez's Omar-penned "Hold You Down," a buzzy, deftly syncopated slice of dance-pop romance that makes J. Lo's sunshiny platitudes sound surprisingly sweet. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)
The Mars Volta Scabdates (Universal)
If you thought the Mars Volta's studio records were over-the-top, dig this live album, a seventy-four-minute behemoth boasting slashing hard rock, electronic mindscapes and snippets of your worst free-jazz nightmares, not to mention song suites of three and five parts, respectively. Recorded during the past three years and featuring only a handful of previously released cuts, Scabdates is as exhilarating as it is confounding, with Cedric Bixler-Zavala working some cracked-throat angst into his Geddy Lee wail as his five mates pound keyboards and pit bloodthirsty guitar squalls against zigzagging rhythms. Warped barnburners such as "Concertina" and "Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt: And Ghosted Pouts" get by on their ability to fuse dense instrumental mayhem and mysterioso Sixties-burnout aura into oceanic jams. Hard-core devotees and prog-rock scholars are likely the only folks who will be able to get through Scabdates in one sitting, but the Mars Volta have created a fairly unique beast: a balls-out concert record made for headphones. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)
Patti Smith Horses/Horses (Arista/Columbia/Legacy)
Patti Smith's 1975 debut album is one of the most important, continually inspiring records ever made: a call for a new heaven on Earth in a revolutionary language of poetry, gunfire guitars and rock & roll jukebox classicism. Thirty years later, Horses is reissued with twice the title and force, twinned with a disc of Smith and her current band (with guest guitar by Television's Tom Verlaine) playing the whole of Horses live in London this year. It is no mere replay. This time around, Smith's voice is deep and ragged, scarred less by age than by infuriated disappointment. The original runaway ecstasy of "Free Money" is now pure wartime, a raging defense of outlaw morality in a new century of unchecked greed. In "Land," Smith's epic ode to the power of dreams, the way to ascension still runs through "Land of a Thousand Dances." It is also littered with "leftover machine guns and tanks . . . old syringes": the debris of a world miles from wisdom and redemption. "My generation, we had dreams . . . and we fucking created George Bush," Smith rails in the London white-noise encore of the Who's "My Generation." Then she turns to those next in line: "Rise up! Take the streets, make change, the world is yours!" So are these songs. (DAVID FRICKE)