(AP) Justin Timberlake's second album rocks your body but isn't interested in your mind; John Mayer embraces his bluesy, soulful side on "Continuum," his third studio album; Madeleine Peyroux, a master interpreter of classics, further solidifies her own sound on new CD.

TV on the Radio unleashes heart and noise on its major label debut; The Mars Volta makes difficult music easy to love on third CD; Kasey Chambers takes risks that pay off with harder-edged "Carnival;" and saxophonist Kenny Garrett looks to the East on new CD "Beyond the Wall."

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Justin Timberlake - "FutureSex/LoveSounds"
John Mayer – "Continuum"
Madeline Peyroux - "Half the Perfect World
TV On The Radio – "Return To Cookie Mountain"
The Mars Volta – "Amputechture"
Kasey Chambers - "Carnival"
Kenny Garrett - "Beyond the Wall"

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Justin Timberlake
"FutureSex/LoveSounds" (Jive)

Justin Timberlake is horny.

This is the primary conclusion we can reach after listening to his new album, "FutureSex/LoveSounds," which features titles like "Sexy Ladies" and "Damn Girl" and lyrics that leave little to the imagination.

"I'll let you whip me if I misbehave," the formerly squeaky-clean 'N Sync star purrs on the first single, "SexyBack," in which he now famously threatens to bring sexy back, as if it ever went anywhere in the first place. Then again, Prince — clearly one of the major influences here — wasn't exactly subtle about expressing what he wanted in his early days, either. "D.M.S.R." was about dance, music, sex and romance. And that was it.

Repeated listens, though, reveal that Timberlake isn't just a big boy talking a big game. Musically, he has evolved since his 2003 solo debut, "Justified," and while he isn't a completely original force of his own just yet, he's at least smart enough to borrow and blend in creative, ambitious ways. Except for "Losing My Way," an out-of-place, gospel-tinged tune about a crack addict seeking redemption, the results are insanely catchy.

Having produced and written nearly the entire album with Timbaland and Nate (Danja) Hills, and calling upon the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am and Three 6 Mafia for collaborations, he relies heavily on hip-hop and its predominate themes: checking out the ladies at a club, inviting them back to the VIP room for champagne, enumerating the various things he'd like to do to them as the night progresses.

(Though on "FutureSex/LoveSound," he's enough of a gentleman to ask of his newest conquest: "Do you like it like this? Do you like it like that? Tell me which way you like it.")

The come-on is blunt but fitting, since "FutureSex/LoveSounds" is obviously intended as prime club music — the tracks often flowing one into the next, the beats and bass lines and Timberlake's falsetto layering on top of one other as the songs build to their crescendos. The album could easily be consumed as a whole, something that rarely seems to be the intention anymore: Put it on at the beginning, leave it on until it ends, and that's your whole night right there.

Thematically, it's not all that complicated — not that that's what you're looking for in a dance album. The songs fall into one of two categories:

a) Justin sees a gorgeous girl on the floor and longs to bring her back to the VIP Room and/or just cut to the chase and take her directly home. This is the main thrust of "LoveStoned," the best song on the disc, which begins as a lustful urge before shifting keys and morphing beautifully into something wistful.

b) Justin is at sea over a loss of love and he longs to reconcile and/or revel in the suffering of the woman who spurned him. In this vein, "What Goes Around" sounds almost like a remake of his own "Cry Me a River," Timberlake's musical dig at Britney Spears after their relationship fell apart. He's dating Cameron Diaz! He couldn't possibly still be bitter ... could he?

As ideal as "FutureSex/LoveSounds" would be as the soundtrack for a night of partying, though, it might function even more effectively as getting-ready-to-go-out music. You know — you're blasting something on the stereo as you're picking out a cute little number to wear, applying mascara and lip gloss and getting psyched up for whatever adventure lies in store.

Justin is there for you, making you feel like the hottest girl on the dance floor, even before you leave the house. Maybe he is bringing sexy back after all. (Christy Lemire)

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John Mayer
"Continuum" (Columbia)

On his 2001 debut "Room for Squares," John Mayer established himself as a sensitive singer-songwriter ready-made for easy listening. He dug a bit deeper but continued in the same vein on his 2003 follow-up "Heavier Things."

With his third studio album, "Continuum," Mayer fully embraces his easy-listening status. One snarly number — a compelling cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Bold As Love" — punctuates an otherwise solidly mellow album heavy on blues and soul influences.

The poppy, rock-lite style that made "Your Body is a Wonderland" a sing-along hit is still evident on the single "Waiting for the World to Change," but the album is driven by serious themes, fat guitar sounds and Mayer's stirring voice.

"Continuum" reveals his maturity as an artist, both in content and style — a development he attributes to his collaboration with drummer Steve Jordan and bassist Pino Palladino, who collectively form the John Mayer Trio, which released a live blues album last year.

Mayer sings of war and religion on "Belief," of existential crisis on "Stop This Train" and of love lost on "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room." The wholeheartedly bluesy "I'm Gonna Find Another You" sounds inspired by Sam Cooke and "Vultures" could have come from an old Hall & Oates record.

The lone lighthearted track is "The Heart of Life," an uplifting tune with a hang-in-there message delivered through tinkling, finger-picked guitar. (Sandy Cohen)

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Madeleine Peyroux
"Half the Perfect World" (Rounder)

Like the best lyrical interpreters, Madeleine Peyroux takes standards like "Everybody's Talkin'," "The Summer Wind" and Charlie Chaplin's "Smile" and nudges a listener into hearing hear new nuances and meanings in familiar lyrics.

The 32-year-old Georgia native spent 13 formative years in Paris, and on "Half the Perfect World," she merges slow Southern sultriness with old-world elegance to create a sound all her own. Peyroux's voice, a mix of smoke and sweetness, drew comparisons to classic stylists Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee with her 1996 debut. She let eight years pass before her second effort, 2004's outstanding "Careless Love." Her new album proves she can be just as effective without taking as much time between works.

She again draws on songwriter Leonard Cohen, who contributes "Blue Alert" and the title cut. Peyroux also offers four originals she co-wrote with collaborators Walter Becker (of Steely Dan), Larry Klein (her producer) and Jesse Harris (a Norah Jones favorite).

As if to underscore her ability to put her own touch on a lyric, her most memorable songs are those closely identified with others. She turns Tom Waits' "(Looking for) the Heart of Saturday Night" into a song of eternal hope, and in a stunning duet with k.d. Lang, she dips her feet into Joni Mitchell's "River" and forms new ripples of her own. (Michael McCall)

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TV on the Radio
"Remain on Cookie Mountain" (Interscope)

Quintet TV on the Radio has earned a reputation as an unpretentious band whose sound is difficult to define.

Gospel synth-noise? Harmonic psych-jazz? Experimental indie-rock-blues?

Branching out from 2004's more minimal "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes," the group's major-label debut and second album, "Remain on Cookie Mountain," crashes and curves through walls of guitar fuzz, samples and melodic grandeur, and still defies categorization.

Singer Tunde Adebimpe's soul-strong voice is equally resolute and vulnerable as it slides between the heady falsetto of heavily bearded singer-guitarist Kyp Malone.

Produced by band co-founder and multi-instrumentalist Dave Sitek, the album doesn't scream its credibility as much as emote it.

"Hold your heart courageously/ As we walk into this dark place/ Stand steadfast erect and see/ That love is the province of the brave," Adebimpe and Malone sing in unison on the piano-led slow burner "Province" — complete with mega-fan David Bowie intoning the chorus.

As TV on the Radio proved at April's Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where hundreds of sweaty fans crammed shoulder-to-shoulder for the band's intensely layered set, music for a new millennium means music meant to curl itself into your mind, not beat you over the head. (Solvej Schou)

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The Mars Volta
"Amputechture" (Universal)

The Mars Volta's third album, "Amputechture," follows in the dark complicated vein of the band's first two releases, with eight songs that veer wildly in sound — even on the same track. And one tune, "Tetragrammation," is just over 16 minutes.

Call it prog-rock, call it what you will. But falsetto-singing frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala and talented guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez have created a multiheaded monster of sound on par with the likes of Tool and Pink Floyd.

If The Mars Volta's 2003 debut album delves into death (a friend's suicide), and last year's "Francis the Mute" twists around such themes as addiction (based on a bandmate's fatal drug overdose), then "Amputechture" is like a David Lynch world come to musical life.

That's not by chance: Bixler-Zavala, the band's lyricist, has compared the album's nonlinear approach to Lynch's movie "Twin Peaks."

The film's delirious mix of drugs, dreams and blood would fit perfectly here. Over Rodriguez-Lopez' percussive blues riffs and Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez' juggernaut drumming, Bixler-Zavala sings about "entrails" and "pitchforks" in a restless vibrato on "Meccamputechture."

Red Hot Chili Peppers' guitarist John Frusciante, a perfect match for the band, lends his spacey licks to each mini rock opera.

Even the album's most tender moment, Spanish-sung acoustic love song "Asilos Magdalena," eventually dissolves into hell-bound slashes of distortion.

"Amputechture," expertly produced by Rodriguez-Lopez, is dramatic, dangerous, an internal experience compared to the group's live blowout performances.

It's best heard with the lights off, whiskey in hand. (Solvej Schou)

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Kasey Chambers
"Carnival" (Warner Bros.)

Over time, Australian singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers has evolved from a teen who performed American country music with her family to a crunchy rocker who writes self-searching songs exploring life's biggest dilemmas with a poetic bent.

Seven years after her U.S. solo debut, Chambers' new "Carnival" follows heroes Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle toward a harder-edged sound. Using her girlish voice with tough-minded tenderness, she concentrates mostly on rough, punkish blues and gritty ballads. She also modernizes her sound with touches of electronics and computerized beats.

For all her talents, her primary strength is her songwriting. Chambers has developed a risk-taking depth that suggests she's absorbed the lessons of her influences and found a distinctive style of her own.

She still confronts male-female issues with nerve; on "Light Up a Candle," she levels a smooth-talking suitor by singing "you say forever and I say for now" while letting him know he'll have to prove he's true before sticking around.

But, on most of the colorful "Carnival," she's exploring spiritual issues with the same yearning questions she once asked of relationships. Like the best songwriters, she's not giving answers, but instead using her own quest to inspire others to look at life as provocatively as she does. (Michael McCall)

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Kenny Garrett,
"Beyond the Wall" (Nonesuch)

Alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett says the inspiration for his new CD, "Beyond the Wall," came from his trip to China last year. But his main point of reference remains closer to home in post-bop jazz and the modal explorations of John Coltrane's mid-60s quartet.

Garrett has not only dedicated the CD to Coltrane pianist McCoy Tyner, but also shares the front line with tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who played alongside Coltrane.

The opening "Calling" evokes impressions of Coltrane's masterpiece "A Love Supreme" — with pianist Mulgrew Miller playing in a Tyner-like style and Garrett and the earthy Sanders engaging in some spirited simultaneous improvisations, while the title track is more in a hard-bop vein.

Garrett's vision of a China-Africa musical confluence is more fully realized on "Qing Wen" which starts with a tender Chinese melody that is driven along by a backup wordless vocal choir with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson entering the mix. "Realization (Marching Towards the Light)" sets a more contemplative mood as Garrett uses a sample of Tibetan monks chanting as a backdrop for the jazz solos. Garrett replaces Tyner on piano on the mournful ballad "Tsunami Song," which features a saxophone-less ensemble with the exotic mix of violin, cello, harp and erhu, a traditional Chinese stringed instrument.

Except for "Kiss to the Skies," Garrett largely steers clear of the funky jazz heard on some of his earlier albums. His playing here is powerful and inspired, especially on the closing "May Peace Be Upon You" where his extended solo builds in intensity into a passionate cry for peace. (Charles J. Gans)

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