New Releases: The Game Suffers From Dre Envy

11/13/06 7:00pm

I learned three things from The Game's new album, Doctor's Advocate: 1. The Game thinks he's Dr. Dre's ultimate protege, although the good Dr. appears nowhere on the new LP. 2. The Game likes Dre's Aftermath label, though he's no longer on it. 3. The Game wishes he was Dr. Dre. The record is out this week.

...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have always been known for their grandiose riffs and melodramatics, but their new So Divided album takes their sound to a whole other level of overblown. There are only 10 new songs, most exceeding the five-minute mark, and the melodies and vocals are so over the top that you'll wonder where the punk band who used to be called Trail Of Dead went. You can give it a spin yourself when it hits shelves on Tuesday.

Blink-182 are no longer one mediocre band; they're two pretty terrible bands. On the heels of the "revolutionary" album from Tom DeLonge's Angels & Airwaves comes Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker's +44. Their When Your Heart Stops Beating debut comes out on Tuesday.

Damien Rice won a pile of awards a few years back for O, his melancholy, sleep-inducing debut. This week, he releases the similarly poorly titled 9. And since the man seems to favour massive brevity, that's all we're saying about it.

Here are some of this week's other releases:

AKON Convicted (Universal)
ARMY OF ANYONE S/T (EMI)
BAD ASTRONAUT Twelve Small Steps, One Giant Disappointment (Fat Wreck/FAB)
JOHNNY CASH Live At San Quentin: Legacy Edition (Legacy/Sony BMG)
CHAMPION The Remix Album (Saboteur/Outside)
COMMANDER VENUS The Uneventful Vacation (Wind-up/Warner)
FAT JOE Me, Myself & I (Virgin/EMI)
MARAH Sooner Or Later In Spain (Yep Roc/Outside)
JOANNA NEWSOM Ys (Drag City)
JOAN OSBORNE Pretty Little Stranger (Vanguard/Fontana North)
TENACIOUS D The Pick Of Destiny (Epic/Sony BMG)
VARIOUS ARTISTS Hip Hop Forever III, Compiled & Mixed By DJ Jazzy Jeff (Rapster/BBE/Outside)
WHITE MAGIC Dat Rosa Mel Apibus (Drag City)
YUSUF An Other Cup (Atlantic/Warner)