Usually when Beck thinks he's fallen in love, he either waxes goofily sentimental, ignoring his eclectic tastes and pulling out the acoustic, or crushes his love in an onslaught of samples, drum beats, and arcane lyrics, vulcanizing any gooey pathos into rock-solid white-boy freakout. Now when Beck sings about thinking he's in love, that's a different animal.

Sure, Nigel Godrich works behind the boards on this one-- which popped up on YouTube earlier this week and vanished just as quickly-- but he adds little cachet to what's practically a Guero B-side. Beck sounds as emotionally distant crooning about love here as he did on most of that album, which would be fine if the instrumentation didn't sound so aloof as well. I didn't buy the accusations surrounding Beck's self-nostalgia on Guero, never held him guilty of lazily trying to revisit his un-revisitable golden period or anything psychological like that. However, this tune's fence-straddling, half-assed funkiness-- while adhering to conventional rock songwriting rules-- concerns me about Beck's creative mojo. Compared to his past works, it's like he's taking a Rorschach test and his best reply is always "I see ink splattered on paper."

Way back in 2003, I had this theory about the Strokes. Under the stipulation that Room On Fire's sublime ballad "Under Control" is their best song, I thought these five fellows from New York City should release a Motown covers album. Really. The aching confessional is, after all, a canny rewrite of the Miracles' "The Tracks of My Tears"; it's a rip-off of the highest order, with the group perfectly projecting their drunken unravel onto a Detroit classic. Why not pull the same trick on "My Girl", "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak From You)", and "Stubborn Kind of Fellow"?

Of course, it's only after Julian started using a real microphone and Nick started thinking cheese-metal guitar solos were the shit that they go the Motown route, covering Marvin Gaye's inconvenient truth eco-anthem (not exactly Holland-Dozier-Holland, sure, but it's close). And then they invite new broheim Eddie Vedder to add craggy grunge vocals and Josh Homme to exchange stuttering robot drum jerk offs with Fab. Inexcusable. Julian sounds like he means it, but everyone else seems to be playing in their own private universe-- one that is totally oblivious to the sorrowful elegance of Gaye's original plea.

Just a B-side lark? Fuck that. The Strokes should be embarrassed-- they officially lost whatever was left of their ragged spark while slumming through this unimpeachable classic.

"Hey Posh?"
"Oi."
"Of all the bands in England, who's the finest?"
"Emmm, Test Icicles."
"No, no, best active band, dearie."
"Coldplay?"
"Someone we don't swing with preferably."
"Embrace?"
"Right you are!"
"What do I win?"
"Another day with Becks."
"Yeaaaa!"
"Where are the children?"
"You mean Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz?"
"Yes, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz."
"No idea."
"I think I'll write the lyrics to the Official England World Cup song, whatchafink?"
"Can I make the stuff with the things?"
"The music?"
"Yes, that."
"Why not?! We are The Beckhams!!! Hahahahahaa!!!!!!"
"Let's go eat people."
"Jolly good! Cheers to England and eating people."

Rocketing out of their precociously pioneering phase, Wilco find themselves right back where they started. Sure, "Is That the Thanks I Get" would have fit well enough on a warmer A Ghost Is Born, but really this belongs on an artier A.M.. It's a modest country-soul number-- a breeze of a pop song-- but they play it like they've realized that pushing the envelope just isn't all that much fun. They sound professional, Jeff Tweedy still writes notes he can't hit, and the real surprise comes at the end: The band that once thanked its audience for "nothing, nothing, NOTHING" now wants to lead them in a singalong. Audience participation is the new Jim O'Rourke.

You had to figure from the title that this would be less XTRMNTR and more Give Out But Don't Give Up, and you'd be right. If a computer were to write a quintessential American country-rock song, this is what it would sound like. It has the rousing chorus, shouty verses, anodyne lyrics like "Country girl/ got to keep on keepin' on," and a mandolin thrown in as the honey mustard to the guitars' fried chicken. Which is all to say that "Country Girl" is generic to the point of pastiche, and its "what can a poor boy do"-isms feel second-hand if not third- or fourth-. Bobby Gillespie does a competent vocal turn, but these days he sounds better with some distortion and a crunching bass line. As Gillespie goes, so goes Primal Scream, and it's hard to imagine this direction leading them much of anywhere.

Wow, the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing a song about California? You don't say! Ah, but it's a trick: This single isn't about the home state RHCP has used as bottomless muse for more than 20 years, but about a character with a coincidental last name. So don't fret when Anthony Kiedis proclaims "California, rest in peace" in the chorus; the band isn't declaring the demise of West Coast culture, they're merely mourning the death of a thinly sketched Bonnie-without-a-Clyde. A similar bait-and-switch is performed with the Peppers' sound, which only retains Kiedis' now-infuriating Hollywood scat while neutering the raucous rhythm section that once powered their bratty white kid funk. All that's left is barre-chord blandness and 12-step solos-- a band just as desperate to survive as their song's main character.

Meet the new Pearl Jam, same as the Pearl Jam that grungy fuddy-duddies cut bait on once the group became insular and phrenological. Though such a position wrongly excludes more than half of the band's catalog from any sort of love, those fair-weather fans might be in the right when it comes to this song. The group's efforts to quote rock unquote sound pretty flat-- you'll believe that this is the group's eighth album. As for what the lyric sheet holds, Eddie's attempts to zing a certain jug-eared preznit one more time ("Tell you to pray while/ The devil's on his shoulder") are equally lackluster. The belabored baseball metaphors on Riot Act were a better vehicle for beating around the bush than this well-intentioned what-is-it-good-for gnashing. If this single is indicative of what Pearl Jam's self-titled album has to offer, Clive Davis might have to spring for Rick Parashar's magical flange to recoup his investment.

I've been walking around all week trying to pretend like I don't really like this song. After all, it's the Vines. Like the Datsuns and other garage-rock also-rans, the Vines' received nostalgia, second-hand riffs, and sub-Doherty rockstar antics make them perennial critical punching bags. But damned if this single isn't likable and even endearing, from the "Mony Mony" rhythms on the verse to its call-and-response chorus to Craig Nicholls's exhortation to turn off the tube and tune out ClearChannel. I admit I'm caught off guard, and just as surprised as you are to be giving this a decent rating, let alone multiple plays.

Greg Dulli's been singing this song for years: relatively subdued verse, stormy chorus, gradual build across the bridge to a big climax. There's nothing on "Bonnie Brae" we haven't heard before on songs like "John the Baptist" and "Teenage Wristband", but I'm not sure I've heard Dulli do it so well and so effortlessly. A simple guitar line battens down the intro, seemingly unspectacular, but it repeats throughout the song until it has grown insistent and insinuating. That guitar adds a stoic air to Dulli's conflicted lyrics and unreserved vocals, both of which are strong enough to make the word "indubitably" sound perfectly apt at the climax. Reportedly written in New Orleans immediately following Hurricane Katrina, and featuring backing vocals by Ani DiFranco, "Bonnie Brae" sounds like Dulli is weathering the storm and emerging stronger on the other side.

Here's Jack White doing corporate team-building exercises, abandoning his close-knit power-blues duo for a full-fledged rock band chock-full with egos. Backed by the Greenhornes rhythm section, White and fellow Motor City crooner Brendan Benson play nice together. Problem is, they're not solving puzzles or doing ice-breakers, they're writing songs, and one member (White, cough, cough) appears to concede too much. On a conventional four-part indie arrangement, White's minimalist guitar-playing sounds, well, minimal. Even so, the clunky band lurches around the swaggering chord progression, saddling White's girl-smitten intensity to the level of Rick Springfield. As the new moniker suggests, White can still emote over the ballbreaking female tale with a sangfroid flair, though the story hits some bumps, namely during the boring chorus (you know, the place White usually shines). I give the guy one gig before he punches Benson's lights out, Von Bondies-style.

Rock singers love to harangue their exes, nothing new. But at least since Jeff Mangum sang, "I am listening to hear where you are," I've preferred songs that stanch the self-aggrandizing tide of romantic expression and just listen. Countless rock boys want to tell you how much they loved you and how you fucked it up; the Subways are interested in your take on the situation, and they've couched their interest in direly infectious pop-rock. It starts off as a melancholy Decemberists-baiting jangle, ramps up to a goosebumpy rock stomp, and, with its male-female vocals, even gives the iconic woman (you know, the one from all the Death Cab songs) her say. The verdict isn't good: "Every time I see you, I can't stand to stay." Can you blame her?

No one ever stands up for progressives when they're dead-on-- look at Dean's media-fueled lunaticization. So, fuck it, I dig the Lips' burbly classic-rock riff-copping, "magic stick" trips and now-standard FX'd beats (ooh reverse snare!) plus handclaps. I also dig their winged-thing hope-- even if they're as subtle as Armaggedon: "Time after time those fanatical minds try to rule all the world," Wayne Coyne begins, swathed in falsetto backing, though "we got the power now/ 'Cause it's where it belongs" is either wishful or druggie thinking.

Hooks? Surely Dubya-heads will be pleased there really aren't any, and that these sonically playful foes still play loveable, uni-hit-wonderable Oklahoma acid-heads. Best parallel is Super Furry Animals' equally bilious, equally disestablishmentarian "The Frequency", except wait that one had a hook. "They have their weapons to solve all your questions/ They don't know what it's for," Coyne adds. I also like how "The Wand" fades into Beanie Siegel, but that's only because I mislabeled the mp3 so it has to play through "songs" on the 40-gig and "Flatline" follows Flaming. Lips'll box yr fucking head off.