Often foolish and quite consistent

Re the new Madonna, Confessions On A Dance Floor: I'm still hung up over "Hung Up," the ravishing "Sorry" is her best second single since "Deeper & Deeper" if not "Express Yourself," the allusions to her influences and her own work are subtle and sometimes winningly deployed (my favorite: the "Papa Don't Preach"-meets-"Die Another Day" strings on "Forbidden Love"), and the infamous "I Love N.Y." has beats and stereo effects that Annie wishes she could afford. Finally, while Stuart Price gets the cred for Dance Floor's post-trance yumminess (the album is the aural equivalent of the fluorescent hand-me-down's Madonna wears on the cover), it's his co-producer who shapes these things into songs with indelible vocal melodies (her best, most unremarked talent).

I agree with Thomas: the album thumps rather too eagerly. We miss "I Deserve It" and "White Heat" and "Waiting" and "Candy Perfume Girl": the decent filler and leaden ballads she insists on including and nevertheless add flavor and getsalt (the self-titled debut did the best job of hiding them: one per side, short and painless). Its most eccentric moment is the sample of Hebrew prayer adorning "Isaac," a dandy bit of exotica which should please "Desert Rose" fans. Dance Floor's consistency is wearying and worrying. If Maddie's Kwicky Kabbalah can purge her muse of impurities with such ruthlessness, then Tom Cruise joined the wrong cult.