RECORDINGS Quick Spins

A WEEKEND IN THE CITY

Bloc Party

In retrospect, Bloc Party's propulsive 2005 debut "Silent Alarm" wasn't the type of record merely meant to get the hipsters moving. As the British band demonstrated during its grueling tour schedule, it was a bid for world domination: the breathless post-punk art-rock riffs provided a bedrock for unifying euphoria on a U2-size scale.

The hooks are as big as ever on the band's second album, "A Weekend in the City," but singer Kele Okereke has pivoted his telescope back down from the stars and instead toward the city around him, tackling the tiny, telling details of London life in songs such as the metallic "Hunting for Witches," the relentless "Where Is Home?" and the tribal-tech anthem "The Prayer." Unfortunately, while the sense of malaise is compelling and the band's conviction undeniable, the message is unclear.

Producer (and U2 vet) Jacknife Lee doesn't help matters by pounding Okereke's vocals down in the mix with drummer Matt Tong's pile-driver drums, but those drums are, ironically, also the album's saving grace. For all the snaking guitar leads, atmospheric detours and pointed lyrics, it's the beat -- not the message -- that keeps the disc going.

-- Joshua Klein

HEADSTRONG

Ashley Tisdale

Since Britney Spears just wasn't formulaic enough, here comes Ashley Tisdale, a star of the Disney Channel's smash movie "High School Musical." The soundtrack was, incredibly, the best-selling CD of 2006. So a functional but hardly overwhelming talent like Tisdale suddenly gets to be a pop star, plugging her voice into deftly produced but familiar-sounding party jams and string-drenched tear-jerkers.

Some of the many skittering electro-beats aren't terrible. "He Said, She Said," unsurprisingly co-written by ex-Britney producer Jonathan "J.R." Rotem, starts with a buzzing-and-clapping hip-hop rhythm recalling rapper Missy Elliott and N.E.R.D. "Baby I could see us touching like that," barks the 21-year-old Disney role model, who is given to stripper-style dancing and short-short miniskirts in concert. The song downshifts immediately into a lovey-dovey chorus, in which Tisdale coos about the more romantic things she'd do given one night.

"Unlove You" is the album's only other halfway decent song, and it's a mixed blessing. It's a Broadway-style ballad, with nice turns of phrase such as "I almost kind of like the pain / wear your tattoo like a stain," but it relies on Tisdale's shaky ability to emote. But by the time the big orchestral finale "Suddenly" comes around, too much Tisdale is a lot like hanging out with her character, Sharpay Evans, in high school: exciting at first, with a bad aftertaste.

-- Steve Knopper

DOWNLOAD THIS: "He Said, She Said."