Music

R&B

On Mary (MCA), the latest effort from queen of hip-hop soul Mary J.

Blige, the emphasis is on soul and not hip-hop. There are some samples among these 14 cuts, but the power in this collection comes from nuanced vocals. Always a distinctive stylist, Blige does her best singing on Mary. Beautiful Ones and Memories suggest a new maturity that allows her to sing alongside Aretha Franklin on Don't Waste Your Time and K-Ci on Not Lookin' with equal skill. The Love I Never Had is a big, lushly produced track by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Songwriter du jour Diane Warren chimes in with a pop ballad called Give Me You, which features Eric Clapton on a guitar solo. But the album's emotional core is No Happy Holidays, a melancholy Blige-penned tale about poverty and pain.

This is a true soul record for the 21st century.

Reggae

Chant Down Babylon (Island) is more than a superb series of duets featuring Bob Marley and today's hottest hip-hop acts. This album of remixed Marley classics is a musical miracle that enhances every participating artist, including Lauryn Hill and Busta Rhymes. Marley's son Stephen does the impossible--slipping hip-hop beats and loops under his father's vocals that stay true to the original vibe while brilliantly updating the music. Marley's approach to dealing with violence and oppression in Jamaica 25 years ago challenges and uplifts Erykah Badu, Guru, the Roots, Chuck D and MC Lyte, among others. This record has such social, spiritual and musical energy that you'll never listen to Marley or hip-hop with the same ear again.

Rock

To hear some people talk, we all should have outgrown heavy metal by now. The great thing about metal is that about once a year, it kicks all such thinking square in the ass. This year's boot belongs to Dave Mustaine's Megadeth, for its ferocious Risk (Capitol). I like it for the reasons a critic would: The songs are better written and the singing is a lot more coherent than most earlier Megadeth discs. On Breadline, Mustaine creates a sympathetic portrait of the white-collar unemployed:

"He's dancin' on the breadline," he sings. "Watch him dance!" Of course, these sort of men don't dance at all, but they might if they heard Megadeth's new drummer, Jimmy DeGrasso, rattle his cage on stuff like Prince of Darkness and Crush 'Em.

On Let the Chicks Fall Where They May (Hightone), the Sprague Brothers come on like a great lost West Texas rock band. This is among the best retro-rock in recent memory, and just to show you they know their stuff, it's dedicated to Mom. The best song is Battle of the Bands, about the teen combo showdown of your dreams--or nightmares.

Rock

Type O Negative views life as a brief, excruciating and meaningless island in an ocean of oblivion. If their vision were any bleaker, they'd drop their instruments and swallow Zoloft. They appear to have concluded that music makes life more bearable and is worth pursuing long enough to produce World Coming Down (Roadrunner), an album of guitar riffs so bent and distorted that your knees wobble. Yes, fans of early Black Sabbath, this is the shit. Everyone I Love Is Dead--now there's a love song worthy of the new millennium. For eight songs it's nihilism, nihilism and more nihilism, then they surprise you with a Beatles medley. Well, a good joke lasts till the end.

If you feel like killing yourself after Type O Negative, you may find reason to live in the ferociously invigorating Defy Everything

(Slipdisc/Mercury) by N17. They bellow for personal and political liberation, denounce violence and are guaranteed to turn your listening environment into the ultimate mosh pit. Their album is also way above average in production values, arrangements and general musicality for this genre.

Rock

The Clash's punk rebel legend has been both an inspiration and a warning to Nineties bands. Their fervor could be galvanizing, but they also had a tendency toward self-mythology. In the end, they thought they could save the world, yet they couldn't save their band. Almost two decades after their breakup, their first live album, From Here to Eternity: The Clash Live (Epic), has finally arrived. The 17 tracks cover most of their classics, from Complete Control to London Calling to Straight to Hell. The sound is richer and packs more punch than most of their studio work. But experiencing a Clash concert firsthand was a transformational event. These tracks recorded between 1978 and 1982 are strong but hardly transcendent.

Pop

There has never been anything like Weimar Germany's Comedian Harmonists.

This Berlin-based sextet--five singers and a pianist--got together in

1927 with the idea of emulating the preeminent American vocal group of the time, the Revellers, whom they quickly surpassed. Before the three Jewish members went into exile in 1935, the group was the toast of Europe, synthesizing barbershop with the fanatical accuracy of lieder singing, sprucing up classically schooled harmonies with African American swing. A version of Duke Ellington's Creole Love Call in which the voices take the instrumental parts is a star attraction on The Comedian Harmonists (Hannibal), their first U.S. collection. Seven decades later, these 14 tracks--which include such American standards as Tea for Two and Night and Day as well as German songs that fit right in--may seem overly decorous. But listen and you'll find out why they were comedians as well as harmonists--on one tune, they gargle in tune and time. They valued beauty, but they were never reverent about it. No wonder Goebbels couldn't abide them.

Stephin Merritt, who performs under the name Magnetic Fields (among others), almost always writes in the first person and never about himself. That makes his deep, inexpressive voice the perfect vehicle for his endless store of catchy tunes and silly rhymes--"flesh" and "Ganesh," say, or "gently" and "Bentley." On 69 Love Songs (Merge, Box 1235, Chapel Hill, NC 27514), Merritt outdoes himself on three CDs. You can buy the discs separately, but since the real pleasure of this tour de force is reveling in its excess, I say spring for the box. You'll be laughing, and humming, for weeks.

Country

The Dixie Chicks have a habit of tattooing baby chick footprints on their feet every time they have a number one hit. Judging from the ready-for-radio anthems on Fly (Sony), the trio of Natalie Maines, Martie Seidel and Emily Robison will soon be covered in skin art from head to toe. The Chicks make their mark through sassy lead singer Maines, whose big delivery is reminiscent of a Stone Poneys--era Linda Ronstadt, especially on the Irish jig Ready to Run. The only downer on Fly is Goodbye Earl, a Dennis Linde composition about two friends who murder an abusive ex-husband. Otherwise, the Chicks click.

Classical

We saw lots of grandiose boxed sets in the Nineties. Duke Ellington, Arthur Rubinstein and Hank Snow, for example, were honored with exhaustively complete collections. Now, as we enter a new millennium, we have the boxed set of them all: Teldec's 153-CD Bach 2000, the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach as performed by the likes of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt and Il Giardino Armonico. Bach was a prolific man. He sired 20 children and composed more than ten times that many cantatas--enough, in fact, to fill 70 CDs. In Bach, as composer Paul Hindemith wrote, "we behold the most distant reaches of perfection attainable by man." Accordingly, the 250th anniversary of Bach's death is being commemorated in grand fashion. There are 16 discs of organ works (brilliantly performed by Ton Koopman), 22 CDs of keyboard music,

14 of sacred vocal works (including the monumental passions of St.

Matthew and St. John) and ten discs of orchestral compositions. There are also more than 100 world premiere recordings. With its historical purity--as well as its elegant packaging and comprehensive notes--Bach 2000 clearly becomes the definitive Bach recording. This is one boxed set where thoroughness is clearly justified. The list price of $1199 gives us pause, but dilettantes might want to consider a light version (minus the sacred cantatas) that sells for $849. (Some retailers offer the complete set for less than $1000.) Why spend that sort of money on compact discs? Greatness is worth a thousand bucks.

Blige obliges, all the Bach you'll need, and Stephen Marley chants down Babylon.