A diva here and just a girl there

Gwen Stefani

“The Sweet Escape” (Interscope)

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GIVING birth for the first time appears to have been only a minor detour in the unfolding of Gwen Stefani’s budding solo career. Her second album has landed barely six months after she and hubby Gavin Rossdale went parental on us, and she’s barely dropped a beat, musically speaking.

“Sweet Escape” puts her back in the studio with most of her “Love.Angel.Music.Baby” songwriting and production collaborators, a savvy team that delivers a similarly effervescent batch of “P.R.H.H.” tracks -- that’s “pop-rock-hip-hop” for the acronymically challenged.

Beats by the Neptunes, Akon, Nellee Hooper, Swizz Beats and her No Doubt bandmate Tony Kanal are poppin’ fresh, full of sonic surprises. It’s mostly likely Stefani’s suburban white girl sensibility that comes through in endearingly goofy touches such as the yodeling snatches from “The Sound of Music” inserted into the album’s leadoff single, “Wind It Up.

There’s a bit more intersection of her disparate worlds this time -- the serious songwriter of No Doubt versus the girls-just-wanna-have-fun pop star of “L.A.M.B.” -- thanks to such aching ballads as “Early Winter” (which she wrote with Keane’s Tim Rice-Oxley) and “4 in the Morning” (with Kanal). In those songs, she sounds less removed from her confessional No Doubt material.

Even with the most rhythm-heavy tracks here -- the stripped-bare siren call of “Yummy” in particular -- Stefani still finds room for hooky melodics that relieve the potential beat fatigue. The minimalist approach really lets her down completely only on “Breakin’ Up,” and even the Neptunes’ production magic can’t pump up this sliver of an analogy between cellphone troubles and relationship communications.

A couple of her songs sternly taunt a lover to deliver on his promises, but she’s at her most intriguing when she’s exploring her own insecurities and inner dilemmas than when she’s acting the domineering diva. There’s such effortlessness in the confident pop music making here you get the sense she could keep knocking out hits this way in her sleep. The really interesting part will be when, or if, she decides it’s time to wake up and make music that matters again.

Randy Lewis

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Less of a shambles this time around

Babyshambles

“The Blinding” (Capitol)

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WHEN Rough Trade Records released Babyshambles’ debut album, “Down in Albion,” early this year, it was a natural pairing: a maverick U.K. independent label of impeccable standing and a band led by a self-destructive drug addict who one moment can seem like a candidate for the scrap heap and the next like the budding genius of British rock.

Now Pete Doherty and Babyshambles arrive with a different kind of sponsor: upright U.S. major label Capitol Records, which is putting out a five-song EP Tuesday in preparation for a full album at an undetermined date. Good luck to both sides in what could be one of rock’s most colorful soap operas.

Surprisingly, Doherty and company sound more disciplined as a self-produced band on “The Blinding” than they did under the eye of producer Mick Jones (Clash, not Foreigner) on the erratic “Albion.” They’re also less audacious, but the five songs make a formidable calling card as the band begins to court a wider audience.

Doherty’s husky voice is the kind that hooks you with personality and attitude, whether biting (on the title track), whimsical (“Love You but You’re Green”) or vulnerable (“Sedative”), and the five songs suggest an array of antecedents -- Beatles, Oasis, Pretenders, Smiths, Kinks, Clash -- as they unfold with a ramshackle charm.

Doherty’s talent isn’t a surprise. He’s best-known in the U.S. for escorting girlfriend Kate Moss into that den of drugs that got her in trouble, but followers of British rock know that his former group, the Libertines, was on the brink of brilliance when his addiction torpedoed the band. The question is whether he’ll do better by Babyshambles.

Richard Cromelin

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Eminem looks back in anger

Various Artists

“Eminem Presents: The Re-Up” (Interscope)

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“THE Re-Up” is a glorified mix-tape -- the quintessential underground hip-hop art form -- sprawling with lots of throwaway songs and loaded with interludes, including a posthumous appearance by Proof, Eminem’s former hype-man, and plenty of remixes featuring new talent and old.

The newcomers are Bobby Creekwater, who sounds like a demonic Andre 3000, and Ca$his, who spins yarns about interstate drug peddling. Old friends such as Obie Trice, D-12 and 50 Cent show up too to complete a dark and sinister tableau of nihilistic gun talk meant to shock.

Eminem is getting back to his pre-”Curtain Call” roots -- the basement freestyle sessions and remixes beloved by his hard-core fan base. His last few albums were critically acclaimed, epic rap operas that rocked the pop music scene. But in Eminem’s paranoid mind, no amount of mainstream accolades quiet his insecurities: “All I hear is I’m best at this, and I’m best at that,” he complains on “We’re Back,” “But I never hear my name brought up in rap.” “The Re-Up” (in stores Tuesday) won’t change that one way or another, because it’s more a compilation of artists, but it might give Eminem more of the street credibility for which he seems to yearn.

Eminem goes solo for the last song, “No Apologies.” Over an orchestral track of his own device, he withdraws any responsibility for the mean things he says (especially about Mariah Carey on “Jimmy Crack Corn” -- ouch!) “No remorse for me like there was no recourse for me,” he screams. And the world shudders.

--Serena Kim

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Albums are rated on a scale of four stars (excellent), three stars (good), two stars (fair) and one star (poor). Albums have been released except as indicated.