CD reviews: Girl Talk, Steve Wynn, El DeBarge

Girl Talk, "All Day" (Illegal Art)

Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, specializes in mashing together the best bits of popular songs from the last 40-odd years into supersaturated, nonstop, ecstatic dance mixes. "All Day" follows the blueprint of 2006's "Night Ripper" and 2008's "Feed the Animals," although it's even more dense with samples. It's relentless.

Since it opens with Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" (layered with Ludacris' "Move Bitch") and ends with John Lennon's "Imagine" (spliced with Rich Boy's "Drop"), "All Day" might seem to have a political subtext. But Gillis' goals (aside from flouting fair-use laws) are less intellectual. He just wants to have fun, and he finds it in R-rated raps from Jay-Z, Waka Flocka Flame and Lil Wayne and in recognizable hooks from the Ramones, Arcade Fire and Bruce Springsteen."All Day" is perfect for the instant-gratification generation: It's a dizzying sugar-rush.

STEVE KLINGE, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3, "Northern Aggression" (YepRoc)

Wynn's amalgam of Lou Reed's streetwise brashness, Neil Young's openheartedness and Bob Dylan's oblique poetry is pretty hard to resist, and who'd want to try? L.A.'s veteran indie rocker is on a tear in his third outing with the up-for-anything Miracle 3 -- guitarist Jason Victor, ex-Twin Cities drummer Linda Pitmon and bassist Dave DeCastro -- fusing Wynn's penchant for Americana rock, psychedelia, brutal punk and extended jams into an intriguingly seductive blend.

"Everybody wants to wonder why," he muses in "Colored Lights" before dropping the song's exquisite punch line: "I don't know why." Wynn makes you relish wondering with him.

El DeBarge, "Second Chance" (Geffen)

Before there was Usher, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake, there was DeBarge. Fronting his family group with his silken croon, the slinky Michigan vocalist was among the finest to cop the moves of Prince and Michael Jackson and even Barry Gibb in hopes of making the ladies swoon. On his new album, his first in a decade and a half, DeBarge soars, his feather-light vocals still in top form after years of personal struggles with drugs and a stint in jail. Friends Faith Evans, Fabolous and 50 Cent add some contemporary flourishes, but DeBarge doesn't need them. More vital to the proceedings are behind-the-scenes collaborators like Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and Babyface, who help sculpt the slow jams that are DeBarge's specialty. Babyface offers up his shamelessly formulaic yet totally irresistible brand of urban pop acoustic guitar plus fingersnaps plus gauzy melody and atmospherics to "When I See You."

Like a lot of current R&B, there is a sense of anonymity in some of the tracks. Any one of the above singers could be subbed in to achieve the same result. But given his place as a forebear, DeBarge definitely deserves these redemption songs.