Pop

Justin Timberlake, "Future Sex/LoveSound" -- 3 Stars

Junior Boys, "So This Is Goodbye" -- 4 Stars

It's hard enough making the leap from boy-band pinup to convincing Casanova, but Justin Timberlake probably faces more of an uphill fight than most.

Usher, Nick Lachey and fellow former teen-pop idols exuded a measure of sexuality and machismo right from the start, but Timberlake began his career dewily crooning puppy-dog schmaltz such as "(God Must Have Spent) a Little More Time on You" and generally being worshipped by 8-year-olds. Overcoming that safe-as-milk stigma has proved too much for the likes of Nick Carter and Joey McIntyre, but Timberlake has pulled it off with aplomb, simply by working that much harder than everyone else.

Timberlake's hugely popular debut album saw him sloughing off the boy-band tag to a degree, but it still frequently had the feel of a precocious boy playing at a man's game. "FutureSex/ LoveSound" (Jive/Sony BMG) is the make-or-break test of Timberlake's commercial manhood, and it finds him donning tailored suits and pulling out all the stops.

Helmed almost entirely by producer Timbaland, the album features lots of deep, dark grooves and several tracks that cross the six-minute mark, thanks to disco-friendly segues that link songs to similar-sounding interludes. Timberlake sells sex through sheer effort, whether he's screaming like a tortured soul man on "Damn Girl," sliding between his lower and higher registers with panache on "LoveStoned" (which features a terrifically plaintive interlude) or simply conjuring Prince on the sinister, throbbing title track and a handful of lesser others.

Timberlake's fidelity to the Purple One is his most significant shortcoming on the album (along with the paltriness of the ballads), proving as he did with the Jacko retreads of "Justified" that he has not quite crafted his own distinctive persona. Clearly the former Mouseketeer is fully growing up, but into whose body?

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If Timberlake really wants to show his audience he has matured and truly wishes to craft a persona that's compelling and layered, he should get the Junior Boys to ghostwrite his next album.

This is how you make electronic pop music that's physically pleasurable but also conveys genuine and complex adult emotions. In fact, no one is doing it better right now than this unassuming Canadian duo, who wed icy, precise synthpop with the breathy warmth of R&B.

On "So This is Goodbye" (Domino), these intrepid Boys lace the dance floor with lush, liquid grooves such as "Double Shadow" and "In the Morning." But there's a lyrical depth and desperation to their synthetic tunes that Timberlake's clumsy social-consciousness ballads simply can't touch.

In particular, the songs of the Junior Boys seem obsessed with the fleetingness and fragility of life's beautiful moments, and the futility of trying to recapture or recreate perfection. The central figure of "Count Souvenirs" hoards keepsakes of a lost love affair while "First Time" seems to find old friends engaging in a night of passion they can never relive. Even the revenge-minded protagonist of "The Equalizer" can't help but betray longing and regret in his bitter voice.

It's lead vocalist Jeremy Greenspan who brings all these conflicted, melancholy characters to life, wrapping up their misery and desire in a softly disarming croon that always feels achingly human. The hazy, woozy title track may describe a breakup in oblique sporting metaphors like "lost in the rough" and "the fight's final bell," but the devastation in Greenspan's voice is unmistakable.