CD REVIEW

Good beats, but 'Blackout' leaves Spears' vocals in the shadows

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, October 28, 2007

Britney Spears - 'Blackout'

(Jive)

As anyone with a TV knows by now, Britney Spears has moved way past your average recording superstar celebrity and is inching (or is it collapsing?) ever closer to that weird twilight zone where her tabloid exploits are her fame's prime motivator. One longs for her Warhol silkscreen, you know?

For those of us who never found Britney Spears anything more or less than a perfectly harmless, post-Madonna popster with a few pretty good songs under her belt (come on, "... Baby One More Time" still slays), the ongoing train wreck that is her public existence is more sad than amusing. Seriously, can you remember anything else about the VMAs besides her form-destroyingly bad opening number? No, you can't.

But none of this is quite as sad as the prospect of a Britney album that Britney seems barely a part of. Folded, spindled and manipulated into something distinctly post-human, Britney's voice feels like just another instrument on "Blackout," a presentable collection of 21st-century dance beats hammered into song-shape by trained professionals.

Leadoff track and hit-like single "Gimme More" is a perfect example. Timbaland's protege Nate "Danja" Hills crafts some sharp, modern club-pound, all-digital thud, Timbo-style blips and four-on-the-floor handclaps. Who cares what she's singing about? The vocal hook works perfectly. (Not so much the pole-dancing video, but anyone who thinks the stripper-chic thing is new for Britney needs to recall 2001's "I'm A Slave 4 U.")

"Piece of Me" takes a shot at critics (social, not musical) with nerves of steel and beats of fuzz. "I'm Miss bad media karma/Another day another drama/Guess I can't see no harm in working and being a mama," she (or whatever Britney-app the producer is running through ProTools) sings. Just for the record (the district of Los Angeles, in Brit's case), I think it's the no-underwear thing and the constant glassy-eyed-ness that made us question the "mama" part. "Radar," inexplicably pronounced "raider," feels like Brit-by-numbers, while the acoustic guitar on "Ooh Ooh Baby" sounds hideously out of place, as do the chord changes lifted from, of all things, "Happy Together."

But there are moments that remind you that pop stars often have access to genuinely next-level production. "Toy Soldiers," produced by next-level Swedish pop masters Bloodshy and Avant, is almost, well, avant-garde in its clicking, snapping drive.

Most of the time, however, Britney is a ghost in her own pop machine, a distant voice chopped into the mix, at the mercy of a fate of her own design.

Which seems dangerously close to her real life persona circa whenever the next tabloid hits the stands. When she sings about losing control, which she's done her whole career, one can't think this is what she had in mind.