Review: 'Doll Domination' by the Pussycat Dolls

Pussycat Dolls

"Doll Domination"

(Geffen)

* 1/2

It's shaping up to be quite an autumn for American feminism. First, we have Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, about whom you might have read something in the last few weeks. Now the Pussycat Dolls, a burlesque troupe turned top-40 act, have made a collection of electro-pop songs that are the opposite of sex: belligerent come-ons and odes to singledom stripped of pleasure, adventure or anything resembling fun.

Both instances capture a particular moment in the woman-as-cultural-cipher debate, but at least Palin's nouveaux-"Fargo" accent doesn't come with a leather corset.

"When I Grow Up" is the album's first single and ideological centerpiece. Built off a filling-loosening house beat and the Dolls' smug cackling, it's so shameless in its celebration of the monoculture of moneyed youth that it transcends taste. It's more of a "95 Theses" as penned by Kim Kardashian and nailed to Viacom's front door with the shards of a broken BlackBerry -- we demand to be on TV; to drive nice cars; to have groupies.

There's nothing that comes within sniffing distance of "Don't Cha," the Cee-Lo penned bit of winking R&B that announced their presence to the world. Instead, "Doll Domination" is a series of signifiers to other, more interesting, moments in recent pop culture.

Especially after a summer when something as weird as "A Millie" or frothy as "American Boy" could rule the radio, the record seems less an album than a list of itemized expenses: a few grand for a twinkly piano ballad, a few more for the galloping Timbaland swipe and a few hundred to wash away the film of cynicism that coats everyone involved with "Doll Domination."

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August Brown

Different ways to sing 'Sorry'

Buckcherry

"Black Butterfly"

(Eleven Seven/Atlantic)

* *

This local outfit made a big splash in 1999 with a self-titled debut full of unapologetically hedonistic hard rock. A product of good timing as much as of musical talent, Buckcherry's buzz didn't quite carry over to the group's second album; by 2001 its throwback hair metal had begun to sound staler than the vintage Mötley Crüe and Guns N' Roses hits on which it was modeled. Yet last year Buckcherry staged an unlikely comeback, thanks largely to "Sorry," a ballad that became a Top 10 hit and drove the band's third album, "15," to the best sales of its career.