CD Review | "Funhouse" is fine, but we want more Pink

CD review |

Pink is a rare bird: a pop star who gets real and gets on the charts. She brings an interior life to factory-assembled fluff and rocks stupid riffs with real soul. Glitzy dance-floor anthems and loaded confessionals go toe-to-toe in her musical playbook. And Pink's got a sense of humor, an immensely appealing and elusive quality among multiplatinum divas, and a great asset — at least for the length of one killer anthem — on the new "Funhouse," Pink's divorce album.

"So what/ I'm still a rock star/ I got my rock moves/ And I don't need you," Pink sings, or sneers, on the first single, a black-and-blue kiss-off, and she ups the ante by casting her ex, motocross racer Carey Hart, in the video for "So What." But it's a fake-it-till-you-make it story line that doesn't last. From there Pink settles into variations on a theme of what went wrong while plumbing sonic turf that, five albums into her career, is starting to feel just a bit too familiar.

If this were an Avril or an Ashlee album, we would jump for joy to behold such a sturdy and shame-free array of hooks and refrains. But Pink has always been better than her material. She's blessed with personality and pipes that lift Top 40 pop-rock above the fray. And while the lyrical themes here are clearly personal to Pink, who co-wrote all of the songs, she continues to rely on standard-issue hitmakers Max Martin (Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys), Billy Mann (Ricky Martin, Take That), Butch Walker (Fall Out Boy) and Kara DioGuardi (Kelly Clarkson) for her musical direction.

That said, Pink continues to make everything she touches her own. She uses brains and brawn to turn the mainstream into a complicated place, which means that "Sober" finds the sweet spot between "American Idol" and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and "Ave Maria A," an overwrought Incubus knock-off, feels urgent as well as ill-advised.

"Bad Influence" is a signature track, a fully cranked, reggae-flecked party tune celebrating the singer's, um, leadership skills. That this is the same girl who puts over bruised ballads like "Glitter in the Air" and "Crystal Ball" with piercing tenderness is testament to Pink's depth, which is still criminally underappreciated.