Pop starlet Katy Perry leaves nothing to chance on her sophomore album, Teenage Dream, a calculated set that builds on the brassy club pop and steel-reinforced ballads of her debut. The mood is ostensibly playful, but the rigid perfectionism of Perry and her producers doesn't allow for much spontaneity. Bellowing herself breathless, Perry sounds overworked and overextended, like the chair of high-school prom committee who puts so much energy into pulling off the event that she fails to have any fun herself.
Perry joins a small army of other bands and musicians with new releases vying for that lucrative back-to-school money this week.
* Dead Confederate follow-up their striking 2008 debut Wrecking Ball with Sugar, which slightly tempers the last record's grungy bite to bring in some of the brighter sounds of '90s alt-rock. That costs the band much of their potency, but there are still some minor delights here, especially when Dead Confederate muse J. Mascis stops by to tear off a signature guitar solo on "Giving It All Away."
* Eels may be too prolific for their own good, yet the latest from Mark Oliver Everett, Tomorrow Morning, nonetheless finds the songwriter in top form. It's one of Eels' least burdened discs, and that lighter mood suits Everett well.
* Usher's latest is Versus is a nine-song companion to his uneven (but hit-laden) Raymond vs. Raymond.
* Vampire Weekend yacht-mates Ra Ra Riot return with The Orchard, an album that pushes their chamber-pop in brainy but much less poppy directions.
* Klaxons' latest album Surfing the Void has a picture of a cat astronaut on its cover. Enjoy, Internet!
* Jagjaguwar records continues its run on all-things Justin Vernon-related with All We Grow, the solo debut of Bon Iver sideman S. Carey. It's plenty pretty, but unlike Bon Iver, the songwriting takes a back seat to the instrumentation.
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* Once unlikely collaborators Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan are now on their third album together. It's titled Hawk.
* And the dance-punk party-orchestra !!! returns with a new one called Strange Weather, Isn't It? that trims some of the art pretenses of the group's previous records and sticks to what !!! does best: jams.
