Billboard CD reviews: Underwood, Spears, Eagles

ARTIST: CARRIE UNDERWOOD

ALBUM: CARNIVAL RIDE

NEW YORK (Billboard) - After a debut album that sold 6 million-plus copies, Carrie Underwood is under significant pressure to keep the momentum going. The Oklahoman delivers in spades on her sophomore effort, on which she was much more involved in the creative process. First single "So Small," No. 4 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart, is a soaring song about the important things in life. "Just a Dream" is the tale of the death of a young soldier from the perspective of his girl back home, while "Last Name," about a drunken flirtation that turns into a Vegas marriage, is a fun diversion. Underwood provides a growling and gritty vocal on the defiant "Flat on the Floor" and convincingly covers Randy Travis' 1988 hit "I Told You So," which has long deserved a second life.

ARTIST: BRITNEY SPEARS

ALBUM: BLACKOUT (Jive Records)

There's an appropriate bleakness to Britney Spears' first album in four years, and her first as a tabloid figure rather than a vibrant teen idol. The hazy-eyed bump-and-grind of her "Gimme More" MTV Video Music Awards performance fits all this material: It's defiant like a bad drunk, uncomfortably oversexed and more at home in a seedy after-hours club than a celebrity ultra-lounge. The music ranges from shockingly minimal -- "Piece of Me" and "Radar" have the synth fugues and smudgy bass of current underground electro and little else -- to novelty pop, like the J.J. Fad-styling of "Freakshow" and Gwen Stefani-ripping snare march of "Toy Soldier." Spears is threatening or seducing, or both, on every track. This is still pop, but the last bits of Spears' song-and-dance girl veneer are cracking, along with the rest of her public persona.

ARTIST: THE EAGLES

ALBUM: LONG ROAD OUT OF EDEN (Eaglesband.com)

The first Eagles album since 1979 rolls forth with the one-two punch of the harmony-laden "No More Walks in the Wood" and the familiar-sounding country rock of "How Long," a J.D. Souther song from the early '70s that could just as easily have been the follow-up to "Take It Easy." The rest is more vintage Eagles, cutting the usual wide stylistic swath from rockers like "Fast Company" and Joe Walsh's Steely Dan-flavored "Last Good Time in Town" to country-flavored midtempos, heart-rending ballads, funk, brow-furrowing introspection and pointed sociopolitical commentaries ("Business As Usual" and the 10-minute title track). It's all a testament to the durable Eagles footprint on the pop landscape.