New Recordings

Rihanna

Unapologetic

(Def Jam ***)

nolead ends If you count Good Girl Gone Bad's "Reloaded Edition," Rihanna has put out an album a year since 2005. Wow. The good, early Pon de Replay, S.O.S., and Umbrella were defined by their lack of a personality. So she and ex-boyfriend Chris Brown have spent the latter half of her career on mutated carnality. Last year's Talk That Talk was her most joyous, sexual, carpet-bombing album, all dubstep synths and hard-as-nails Euro-dance structures alongside all the staccato-hook FX she nicked from The-Dream. This one's more of the same, with the special bonus of '80s-style ballads that beat No Doubt's, particularly "Love Without Tragedy," and "Loveeeee Song," featuring Future, who explains, "I don't want to give you the wrong impression / I need love and affection."

- Dan Weiss

nolead begins Led Zeppelin
nolead ends nolead begins Celebration Day
nolead ends nolead begins (Atlantic ***1/2)

nolead ends Why won't Led Zeppelin commit to a reunion tour and cash the biggest unsigned check in the music business? Partly because Robert Plant has better things to do (and new music to make). And partly because, in their heart of hearts, the band members know that, over the long slog of a world tour, sustaining the thrilling excellence demonstrated throughout this document of a one-night-only get-together would be no easy business.

Celebration Day was recorded at London's O2 arena in 2007 in honor of-then recently deceased Atlantic Records executive Ahmet Ertegun. "Ahmet, we did it!" Plant shouts skyward after the band performs "Stairway to Heaven."

Guitarist Jimmy Page, bass/keyboard player John Paul Jones, drummer Jason Bonham (son of original member John Bonham, whose death in 1980 led to the band's breakup), and leonine front man Plant are in commanding form throughout the two-hour set. Crisp, thunderous and relaxed, the defining architects of heavy rock move from strength to strength, from intoxicating jams like "No Quarter" to the controlled fury of "Rock & Roll," with Plant paying tribute to revered if uncredited blues forebears like Robert Johnson and Blind Willie Johnson along the way. Celebration Day comes in a variety of configurations; it's worth getting one that includes the Dick Carruthers-directed performance film for a fully satisfying Led Zep redux experience.

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Bat for Lashes
nolead ends nolead begins The Haunted Man
nolead ends nolead begins (Parlophone ***1/2)

nolead ends Given the striking cover image of Bat For Lashes' Natasha Khan standing naked with a naked man artfully and judiciously draped over her shoulders, the tendency may be to hear The Haunted Man as Khan's most stripped-down, emotionally bare album. And that is true, especially on its tremendous first single, "Laura," another in a series of stirring and enigmatic character studies that includes Fur and Gold's "Prescilla" and Two Suns's "Daniel."

But The Haunted Man, the British artist's third album, can also be elaborate and broadly orchestrated, with string sections, martial drums, and male choirs surging behind Khan's keyboards and powerful voice. Khan works in the tradition of Kate Bush, but she's also a peer of Florence & the Machine. While the title track may be over the top in its ghostly conceits, songs like "Winter Fields" and "All Your Gold" captivate with insinuating, arresting drama.

- Steve Klinge

nolead begins Ne-Yo
nolead ends nolead begins R.E.D.
nolead ends nolead begins (Motown ***)

nolead ends Like Sy Sperling and Hair Club for Men, Ne-Yo isn't just senior VP of A&R at the newly revitalized Motown label - he's a client. There's a lot of legacy where the Motor City Sound is concerned. With his

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