Records are rated on a scale of one (poor) to five (excellent) stars.

ROCK

MOBY: 'Hotel' (V2)

Moby has always flirted with adult contemporary. This is where they swap apartment keys. Or share a hotel quickie, anyway.

But this is easy listening as a Bowie fan would do it. See the Reznor-esque mood piece, "I Like It," for instance, with its raindrop-sampling keyboard riff. Or go directly to his "Ziggy Stardust" sequel, "Spiders," in which Moby croons, "Come back to us, Spiders/Come on, crush my hands/Let peace and beauty reign/And bring us love again/Like you can."

That "Spider" track is toothless Bowie, though, unlike the better moments here, which without actually rising to the level of his inspiration recapture the drama, majesty and tunefulness of Bowie at his chilliest, from "Hotel Intro" (an ambient opening track that sets high expectations for the second, entirely ambient disc) to "Raining Again," which features a pummeling snare drum beat but goes more for grandeur than "rock," with gospel-flavored backing vocals fit for "Play" from Laura Dawn, who's practically his co-star here.

Other highlights range from the Bowie-esque swagger and towering hooks of the slightly Spanish-flavored "Beautiful" (which also sounds a bit like Unit 4 + 2's "Concrete and Clay" on quaaludes) to the gentle disco throb of "Where You End," in which the smitten singer doesn't know where he begins and you end.

"I love you and you're beautiful," he croons. "You write your own songs."

As does Moby, except when he's inexplicably covering New Order's old techno-pop classic, "Temptation," as a melancholy ballad perfect for a funeral or the chill-out room.

Your call.

It's one of several "Hotel" tracks that left me thinking he should get together with Celine Dion and teach her how to make a record. Just for kicks. Although I'm not sure why.

And speaking of the chill-out room, the ambient CD is really good, surprisingly emotional for something you could easily mistake for inessential background music, which it isn't.

-- Ed Masley, Post-Gazette pop music critic

AQUALUNG: 'Strange and Beautiful' (Columbia)

When Thom Yorke started getting all weird and arty -- well, like weirder and artier -- some Radiohead fans started looking elsewhere for their fix of ethereal-melancholy pop.

Coldplay was more than willing to oblige, and there are plenty more out there who haven't become household names. Matt Hales, making the odd decision to take the name of Jethro Tull's park-bench pedophile, Aqualung, has the potential.

It takes a while for him to build up to all-out Radiohead worship on "Strange and Beautiful," but he gets there somewhere around the fifth song and stays there. This isn't the side of Radiohead that rocks, although it occasionally gets noisy; it's the sad, dreamy side.

Hales/Aqualung relies on piano and light backing to deliver his simple, heartbroken songs in a high, thin falsetto. It works well as meditative background music, breaking out in a few places, like on the catchy "Brighter Than Sunshine," an obvious Beatles nod and the single that could pull people in.

-- Scott Mervis

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE: 'Lullabies to Paralyze' (Interscope)

This actually begins with a lullaby, sung darkly of course by Mark Lanegan, the mystery Queen who wanders out from the mist like Dracula or, better yet, the Wolfman and then slinks back in the shadows.

He sets the record's dark tone and then hands it over to Josh Homme, who finds himself in action without his sinister partner-in-crime, bassist/screamer Nick Oliveri. His naked, demon-boy presence will be missed on stage for sure, but Queens fans will be relieved to know that his dismissal doesn't mark any titanic shift in the band's sound.

It's still heavy, no surprise, and still warped, pulsating with a hazy, fuzzed-out psychedelic stoner edge that gives it appeal far beyond the metal scene, particularly when topped with Homme's airy and fragile vocals. Here he's bolstered by utility hitter Troy Van Leeuwen (A Perfect Circle), guitarist/bassist Alain Johannes (Eleven) and drummer Joey Castillo (Danzig), with cameos by Lanegan, Shirley Manson and Brody Dalle (briefly) and, of all people, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, who adds a blues guitar growl to the ghostly "Burn the Witch."

Homme and company deliver the cryptic Stone Age rock in your bite-size and harder-to-digest chunks. "In My Head" and "Little Sister" are hard-rock songs with bright, poppy hooks; "Medication" and "Everybody Knows That You're Insane" attack like Sabbath in a "Paranoid" state; and for the more gothic taste, the epic "Someone's in the Wolf" and "The Blood is Love" and the positively grating "Skin on Skin" unleash the chaotic monster within.

Throughout, Homme, with his horror movie lyrics, remains an intriguing enough host that he can deliver a line like "I just curse the sun so I can howl at the moon," without making it clear whether it's scary truth or just a goof.

-- Scott Mervis, Weekend Mag editor

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BLUES

Roomful of Blues: 'Standing Room Only' (Alligator)

I first saw Roomful of Blues at a little Swissvale bar in the late '70s, and I was amazed at how well this swinging little jump blues band captured the big musical style of its choice. Way back then, Roomful already had been polishing its brassy sound for about 10 years. And, of course, the sound still shines.

Most members of the original group are gone, including founders guitarist Duke Robillard and keyboardist Al Copley, who put the group together in 1967.

But the sound -- their incredibly tough, sharp, swinging sound -- remains undiminished. Of course, many members have come and gone (alto saxman Rich Lataille is the current longest-surviving member). But the sound remains.

Fronting the eight-piece band these days is Mark DuFresne, a big-voiced singer and harp player who gives the music a sense of the some of the big voices the band has patterned itself after, and backed: Big Joe Turner, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Jimmy Witherspoon and Roy Brown.

The group blends great old music like Roy Brown's "Up Jumped the Devil," with original material like "The Love You Lost on the Way," and it's a seamless mix of old and new, skillfully held together by the spirit of this spirited music.

-- Jim White, Post-Gazette staff writer

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CLASSICAL

Beethoven: 'Fidelio'; Live Vienna State Opera performances from 1944 (Conducted by Karl Bohm) and 1953 (conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler) (Andante)

Beethoven's only opera -- the tale of a courageous woman who dresses as a man to assist the jailer where her husband is a political prisoner and thereby rescue him from a murderous adversary -- is many things to many people. What it was to two of the greatest conductors of the past century is demonstrated side by side in the live performances here beautifully packaged by Andante.

The performances took place in Vienna during and shortly after World War II, and each cast was exemplary for its time. Neither rendition took place in the actual Vienna opera house. Karl Bohm's was recorded in special wartime sessions at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Furtwangler's in the Theater an der Wien -- an alternate postwar venue while the bombed-out Vienna Opera House was under re-construction.

Bohm's is a human conception, the characters exemplified by the melting Leonore of Hilde Konetzni, who exudes love and determination in every phrase. She is perfectly partnered by the handsome-sounding Florestan of Torsten Ralf, a Swedish tenor who almost manages to make Beethoven's impossibly high lines sound easy. And if there is an operatic villain more villainous in sound than Paul Schoffler's Pizzaro, I haven't heard him.

By contrast Wilhelm Furtwangler saw "Fidelio" as a grand ode to freedom and the fight against tyranny. Whereas Bohm's characters emerge as individuals, Furtwangler's are monumental symbols. Martha Modl (Furtwangler's Leonore) is heroic in the extreme. Her high notes may peel off your wallpaper, but she sounds like she really means what she's singing about, and the moment where she announces that she is Florestan's wife should frighten off the most pernicious of evildoers.

Furtwangler's most moving moments are more generalized: the Prisoners Chorus and the "Leonore" No. 3 Overture -- interpolated, as was custom then, between the scenes of Act 2. In any event this is a must-have set, each performance the product of a great conductor's extraordinary vision.

-- Robert Croan, Post-Gazette senior editor