A first listen might reveal Sahara Hotnights as nothing but a B-league Sleater-Kinney, but after a few spins it’s clear that this band makes no pretensions to the riot-grrl ideology usually accompanying any girl-group aspiring to produce punk-pop. In short, they are playing this music without any agenda but fun, and this veneer permeates every moment. This band doesn’t need videos of themselves waterskiing in formation or cavorting playfully around a fountain to prove themselves as true to their declared image: the music of Kiss & Tell speaks for itself

—Christopher A. Kukstis

Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned

The Prodigy

(Maverick)

What made the Prodigy’s 1997 release The Fat of the Land so potent and noteworthy was that it found its genesis in the late-90s British rave scene while giving a hefty nod to something more hardcore. With the heavily-pierced and demonic-looking Keith Flint posing as front man, the Prodigy had legions singing along to the inane and repetitive lyrics of the likes of “Firestarter,” “Breathe” and even the controversial “Smack My Bitch Up.”

Their newest album Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned begins strongly, seeming to pick up where The Fat of the Land left off. “Spitfire,” the album’s opening track, is a blood-pumping electronic anthem that plays like the aural equivalent of a shot of adrenaline to the heart. Much like Oasis’s “Fucking in the Bushes,” there’s simply no sitting still while listening to this song. Sadly, however, the remaining twelve tracks come nowhere near to living up to this high standard. The second track “Girls” sounds like an unholy marriage of the all of the worst elements of old-school rap and British drum and bass rave music.

This album’s major fault stems from the absence of the crazed Keith Flint. What had made the Prodigy so unique was its ambiguous and unique identity as an electronica band with an identifiable voice and front man; it wasn’t just rave music, but something new with a cool beat that you could sing along to. Evidently, however, the real brains behind the Prodigy from the start was arranger/producer Liam Howlett and, in this latest effort, he takes the band back to its roots, unfortunately relegating it to the category of mediocre dance music.

—Steven N. Jacobs

Straight Outta Ca$hville

Young Buck

(G-Unit/Interscope)

The title of Young Buck's first solo project, Straight Outta Ca$hville, is a throwback to 1989's Straight Outta Compton, the classic gang life manifesto from N.W.A. (Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Easy-E, M.C. Ren and D.J. Yella). N.W.A.'s depictions of violence, often directed against the police, put Los Angeles on the hip hop map. Hailing from Nashville, Buck hopes to do for the Dirty South with Ca$hville what Compton did for the Wild West.

Buck, formerly a Cash Money Millionaire who—though still a millionaire—currently rolls with G-Unit, clearly takes a great deal of pride in his Southern roots. Most of the songs on Ca$hville are situated in his old Tennessee hustling grounds. In "Do It Like Me," Buck boasts: "I know I got a dirty mouth, bitch, I'm from the South / I'm nothin' like what you done seen or you done heard about." But from the gunshots that open the album to the gritty tales of life in the 'hood to the vicious threats against rival rappers like Ja Rule, everything sounds very familiar. Buck embraces the same themes and uses the same thundering beats featured in the solo albums of his G-Unit counterparts 50 Cent (Get Rich Or Die Tryin') and Lloyd Banks (The Hunger for More).

There are a few fresh tracks on Ca$hville including "Let Me In," a club hit with a catchy staccato melody, and "Look At Me Now," in which a reflective Buck raps about "what these streets done done to me" over a bouncy beat by Denaun Porter (who produced the steel pan anthem "P.I.M.P." for 50 Cent). Unlike Compton, however, Ca$hville fails to inspire any awe or fear of Southern street culture. It is Tennessee, after all.

—Andrew C. Esensten