Christina Aguilera

My Kind of Christmas (RCA)

If you have always wanted to know what Christina Aguilera's kind of Christmas would be like, now you know. It's filled with glitter, bass and pop anthems like "Xtina's Xmas." But like her musical (and apparently stylistic) hero, Mariah Carey, Christina does have some vocal chops. They are displayed prominently in "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "Merry Christmas, Baby," two soulful ballads, which are all that a Christmas album can really offer anyway. However, her other results are mixed. Whereas the main track "Christmas Time," is upbeat and catchy (it's by the same team that brought you the upbeat and catchy "Come On Over"), other danceable songs like "The Christmas Song" become overwhelmingly kitschy, even for a Christmas album. Of course the question is why a Christmas album has to be slightly cheap at all, but the best poor Christina can do is offer up an album that is not entirely cheesy. So if you are looking for something a little spunky from your favorite teen pop superstar this side of Eminem, you might enjoy "My Kind of Christmas," but that is the only conditional approval that can be given for a "first-time" Christmas album by a major pop star. C -Jimmy Zha

Dwight Yoakam

Tomorrow's Sounds Today (Reprise)

Advertisement

Dwight Yoakam reaffirms his status as a country outsider in his latest album Tomorrow's Sounds Today. Comprising diverse elements founded on honky-tonk tradition and on Yoakam's musical instinct, Tomorrow's Sounds Today is upbeat and bristling with the warm and honey-sweet vocals of the singer-songwriter. However, although Tomorrow's Sounds Today reflects Yoakam's emotionally charged This Time to a certain degree, it lacks the exuberance and gleeful rockability that launched that 1993 Grammy-winning album.

Yet even with his new, more subtle and consistent, songs, Yoakam-decked out as always in his trademark '50s-style embroidered jacket, skin-tight faded jeans, cowboy boys and cowboy hat-still offers a maverick interpretation of country music that pushes the genre to evolve beyond its established heritage. Particularly notable is "The Sad Side of Town," co-written with Bakersfield hit-maker Buck Owens with whom Yoakam sang on his 1988 No. 1 hit, "Streets of Bakersfield." And the momentous accordion passage of "Alright, I'm Wrong" sweetly complements Yoakam's sinuous croon. B -Yan Fang

Submarine

Skin Diving (Reprise)

Submarine submerges, dives deep into those secret spots behind your consciousness that only glow with the lights out. In their debut album Skin Diving, south London trio Al Boyd, Richard Jeffrey and Adaesi Ukairo have oozed out a unique and seductive blend of electronic pulse. Lyrically intriguing, although sometime tempted to too-easy rhymes, Skin Diving strikes a perfect balance between vocal and vibration.

The album starts off sinister and subtle with guilty tracks like "Sunbeam," suspending Ukairo's sultry British voice, vaguely reminiscent of Portishead's Beth Gibbons, over relaxed jazz grooves that fuse high-pitched rhythms with smooth bass. But as Submarine dives deeper into the skin it somehow finds its innocence in the lighter, airier texture of songs like "Out to Lunch" that replace much of the bass with the softer aura of strings.

Though the beginning of the album is more successful than the end, it remains cohesive, revealing a versatility in the trio that should keep them around for at least a little while. Boyd's musical direction and Jeffrey's lyrics should serve as backbones to the band in future endeavors, but more than anything it is Ukairo's voice that makes Submarine sparkle in the dark. A- -Matthew S. Rozen

Kasey Chambers

The Captain (Asylum)

Kasey Chambers' American debut The Captain is grounded in the 24-year-old Australian native's experiences as a desert nomad wandering through the desolate, inhospitable Nullarbor Plain of south-central Australia. First released down under in 1999, The Captain is a collection of intense, complex and stirring songs filled with warm, personal tales of the artist's attempts to understand life's unresolved tensions. Kasey Chambers' ballad-driven album challenges modern country music with a potent mix of acoustic and electric guitars, fiddle passages and hard-driven roots-rock percussion.

Songs with sweet, rich melodies such as the biographical "Southern Kind of Life" and the emotionally honest "These Pines" are interspersed with sharper and more urgent tunes such as "Don't Talk Back" and "Last Hard Bible," countering each other in an anachronistic combination of hillbilly heartache and well-crafted kick-ass sass. The standout track is the album closer. "We're All Gonna Die Someday" reveals Chamber's youthful wisdom with lyrics such as "It hurts down here 'cos we're running out of beer/But we're all gonna die someday." Throughout, however, her vibrant voice retains a fresh, distinctive sound that, while not immediately irresistible, is soulfully unrefined and remarkably vibrant. A- -Yan Fang

Artful Dodger

Rewind (London/Public Demand)

Ah, UK garage, that magnificent union of house's delicious divas and pristine hi-hats with jungle's breakbeats and primal bass. It's sexy, funky and smooth as hell. It's a similar but tastier alternative to the hip-hop fluff dominating American club charts. It's the most enticing dance genre in years.

DJ compilations like Rewind, mixed by leading garage producers Artful Dodger, aim to provide an introduction to the garage sound. The opener, Artful Dodger's own "Woman Trouble," is enormously convincing: if listeners are initially thrown off by its weird, shuffling beats, even the most funk-deprived booties will succumb to the awesome mess of kick drums, crisp snares, fat melodic bass and sensuous vocals that soon follow. The remaining tracks mirror this musical blueprint with fairly uniform degrees of success. Even a remix of an All Saints song manages to sound fresh.

Some of the mix's downfalls are apparent. The sameness of many songs reveals this style's infancy. And it gets insipid after the 10th diva professes her unending love for you, baby. Despite these issues, it's clear that UK garage has potential. Rewind leaves you feeling like you've been partying the night away in a packed, sweaty club, not some drug-addled rave. B -Ryan J. Kuo