New CDs: NIN, Weezer

Nine Inch Nails With Teeth (Interscope)

Trent Reznor was ahead of his time. Like nobody else in the 1980s, he heard the smoldering teen rage inside the blip and bleep of early synth-pop: Under all the Atari beats and shiny-shiny haircuts, there was an ordinary loser kid's heart burning for vengeance against the world, and Reznor amped that sound into the full-blown sociopath New Wave splendor of Pretty Hate Machine, Broken and The Downward Spiral. No rock star had ever shown such a subtle appreciation for the dark side of Adam and the Ants, and no rock star had ever worn black leotards out of such deep inner conviction. On With Teeth, he makes his long-awaited comeback, with Dave Grohl on drums to help bang the Nine Inch Nails formula into nasty shape.

Once prolific, Reznor now labors over each album as if it were a five-year plan, finessing the sonic kinks for four years, eleven months, thirty days and twenty-two hours. Plus a couple of hours for lyrics, which he apparently composes by skimming the poems his fans leave on message boards. ("Oooh, 'Sometimes I forget I'm alive'? I can use that one!") On Teeth, he abandons the quiet piano diddles of The Fragile for pure aggro. The first half is basically Reznor saying, "You want a hit single? I'll give you a hit single," with simplistic, radio-ready sludge a la "The Hand That Feeds." But the second half has Nine Inch Nails' richest, heaviest music since Downward Spiral, with the "Billie Jean" drums of "Only," the monolithic synth crunch of "Beside You in Time," the Pixies-meet-Pere Ubu clang of "Getting Smaller." It all builds to the one big "Hurt"-style piano ballad on the album, "Right Where It Belongs," so mournful that Johnny Cash must be singing it in heaven. It's vintage Nine Inch Nails: New Wave with a heart of darkness. (ROB SHEFFIELD)

Weezer Make Believe (Geffen)

Oh, the suspense of a new Weezer album. Is Rivers Cuomo still one messed-up little rock auteur? Will he write a batch of crunchy pop-punk gems, reporting from his tortured private world about the fun he imagines the rest of us are having? Will he ever find true love? On Make Believe, the answers are yes, yes, and wake the fuck up. Make Believe is a breakthrough for Weezer, a bold step into the world of the two-word album title, with twelve songs running 45:15, positively epic by their standards. But most important, Cuomo's songs are his most plaintive and brilliant since Pinkerton, with couplets such as "I may not be a perfect soul/But I can learn self-control" narrating the latest kinks of his journey into full-fledged humanhood. Not since Brian Wilson has an L.A.-pop mastermind gotten such musical mileage out of wanting to be an ordinary guy, not realizing that his psychosexual freakitude is exactly what makes him one.

Make Believe kicks off with "Beverly Hills," the single that revisits the dork narrator of old Weezer songs like "My Name Is Jonas," ten years older but no wiser, graduating from comic books and twelve-sided dice to watching the E! channel. It's a thunderous tune, with an awesomely terrible 1970s wah-wah solo that must have been sampled from Jeff "Skunk" Baxter. The sad love songs that follow -- "We Are All on Drugs," "Hold Me" -- build on self-loathing hooks ("I know that I can be the meanest person in the world") and huge pop flourishes. The best is "Pardon Me." It sure is weird to hear Cuomo go back to his old "Buddy Holly" voice, summoning up all his strength to belt, "I apologize to you/And to anyone else that I hurt too." Um, Rivers, is this a twelve-step thing? Nobody's mad at you, honest. In fact, after listening to Make Believe, we love you more than evs. (ROB SHEFFIELD)

Aimee Mann The Forgotten Arm (SuperEgo)

The concept behind Aimee Mann's fifth solo album feels like something to talk about on NPR: A former boxer returns from Vietnam addicted to smack, and he and his softhearted girlfriend endure painful rehab and dysfunctional domesticity. But the vague narratives and subtly pretty story-songs of The Forgotten Arm save Mann from the self-loathing that dragged down 2002's plodding Lost in Space. With tempos cranked slightly, "Dear John" and the junkie lament "Clean Up for Christmas" combine singer-songwriter clarity, L.A. harmonies and melancholy piano into a convincing package. Mann is still prone to depressive cliches such as the "Life just kind of empties out" thesis of "Little Bombs," but this time around her songs are more pleasurable for seeming less deeply felt. As a wise Detroit rapper once said, sometimes you have to lose yourself. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Joe Perry Joe Perry (Columbia)

A Joe Perry solo joint? About time! Aerosmith heads revere his Joe Perry Project albums from the early Eighties, when the band was on the skids: Side Two of Once a Rocker, Always a Rocker was the best Aerosmith-related skree between Rocks and Pump. On Joe Perry, he not only plays mean guitar (which figures) but sings (which doesn't). He also writes, produces and plays almost every note, totally avoiding the all-star-guest thing that would have sunk this album. He handles blues bulldozers ("Shakin' My Cage"), ballads ("Ten Years"), instrumentals ("Twilight") and covers of the Doors' "The Crystal Ship" and Woody Guthrie's "Vigilante Man." It works because Perry isn't trying to build a new superstar franchise -- he's just a guitar freak doing his thing in the basement studio. Verdict: wicked pissa! (ROB SHEFFIELD)

Fall Out Boy From Under the Cork Tree (Island)

Fall Out Boy's second album, From Under the Cork Tree, is a peculiar mix of in-jokes ("Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn't Get Sued") and romantic dramas that post-adolescents are unlikely to care about. But thanks to a lot of taut grooves and dense hooks, these Chicago kids' near-emo is always kind of charming. The opening cut follows a joke about wrist-slitting with a lively group chorus, and the well-wrought refrain of "Dance, Dance" suggests a collaboration between Linda Perry and Thursday. Singer Patrick Stump's guts-spilling can be cloying. But From Under the Cork Tree is buoyed by its self-deprecating humor; the over-the-top screamo parody "I Slept With Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me" proves that in the business of emotional bloodletting, a little misdirection can make a big difference. Suggested next single: "I Liked You a Whole Lot Better Before You Became a Fucking MySpace Whore." (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

The Raveonettes Pretty in Black (Columbia)

Rock & roll's past is a living thing to singer-songwriter-guitarist Sune Rose Wagner. There was no mistaking his precise study and modern love of Buddy Holly balladry and the malt-shop noir of the Shangri-Las inside the hard rains of distortion on this Danish band's first two records. But clarity is the new extreme. Pretty in Black is virtually fuzz-free, highlighting the exquisite detail in the Raveonettes' gift for pastiche: the prowling, garage-surf guitars in "Love in a Trashcan"; the ghost dance of "Red Tan," wrapped in Phil Spector-style sleigh bells. Wagner's vocal interplay with Sharin Foo -- a dazzling spin on girl-group coo and the Gregorian-country blend of the Everly Brothers -- blooms in the desert echo of "Uncertain Times," a spaghetti-western take on Ben E. King's "Spanish Harlem." Cameos by Ronnie Spector, Suicide's Martin Rev and Maureen Tucker of the Velvet Underground affirm the purity of Wagner's vision. But there is nothing nostalgic about Foo's ice-angel poise in the futurist doo-wop of "Seductress of Burns" or the stiletto guitars piercing the heartbreak in "Somewhere in Texas" like poisoned arrows. Pretty in Black is history on the march. (DAVID FRICKE)

The Go-Betweens Oceans Apart (Yep Roc)

Now in the sixth year of a comeback that's found them polishing the elusive, delicately rockin' romanticism of their Eighties masterworks, Australia's answer to R.E.M. are on a roll. With Grant McLennan and Robert Forster working up poetry both wise and wiseass over well ornamented strumming, newcomers will hear a seductively pretty indie-pop record, while their still-ballooning cult can marvel at the sound of their iridescent melodies turning autumn-gold. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Mike Doughty Haughty Melodic (ATO)

The third solo album from this ex-Soul Coughing frontman ditches the arty expansiveness of his former band and goes for laid-back roots rock. Doughty hasn't lost the indie-boy cynicism that endeared him to loads of college kids, and here he has help from Dave Matthews and N.E.R.D. drummer Eric Fawcett. On "Busting Up a Starbucks," Doughty works up autumnal beauty and invokes James Van Der Beek with just the right amounts of nostalgia and wink-wink humor. (ROLLING STONE)