What is this thing called love? So much of popular music and mainstream film deals with the intricacies of the heart, and yet it's usually without the specific anguish and joy that romance brings. But the audience still eats it up. How else to explain Will Smith's wholly unoriginal romantic comedy sucking up $45 million of our hard-earned money?

Hitch (Columbia Pictures)

What kind of gift is this for Valentine's Day? Andy Tennant's occasional charmer is sweet and inoffensive and all that — mostly, it amounts to less than nothing. Why do we expect so little of these films? Hollywood romantic comedies dance and glide around one of the most important emotional components to a human being, and yet they almost never feel remotely in touch with the sentiments being espoused. (The onscreen characters don't ever appear to be in love — they just seem slightly childlike, despite the impressive occupations they're supposed to possess.) Will Smith's venture into charismatic comedy doesn't rock those pleasant waters — his Hitch starts off confident, discovers his flaws, and emerges as an enlightened man Ready For Love, boom boom boom. New York looks beautiful in the background, while Eva Mendes, Kevin James, and that anonymous blonde cutesy up the foreground. But if this film is supposed to make me remember what it was like to first fall in love with my sweetie, I can't help you. It wasn't this silly, this contrived, this immaculately well-dressed. Maybe it's a relief to the audience to watch famous people act like fools for love. Maybe it's supposed to assure us that we can figure out our own relationships just fine. For a lot of couples, that alone will be worth the $20.

Randy Newman, live with the Long Beach Symphony (Saturday, Feb. 12)

Opening with a smattering of his film scores, this rare Randy Newman concert demonstrated what he does for money now. Distinct and sentimental, you recognize him in it, but, aside from The Natural, his movie pieces never quite pop. Then came intermission and then came the singer-songwriter material. It is not an understatement to say that his work in the '70s — and, more recently, his late-'90s triumph, Bad Love — ranks with the best rock commentary ever made. He is largely ignored because he worked in satire and black humor — he didn't go for confessional and he couldn't stand protest. But Randy Newman singing "Political Science" at 61 is meaner and scarier than it was three decades earlier. That aging cynic up there on the stage with the string sections that break your heart: He wrote about racism, dirty sex, injustice, and the underside of America as well as ... who? Right, Dylan peaked higher. But Springsteen collapsed under his own weight, U2 only saw the country as outsiders, and Eminem hasn't logged enough hours yet. Randy Newman is not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but any sharp songwriter knows his arsenal backwards and forward. He is one of America's great fonts of music, someone who speaks in ragtime and jazz and pop and orchestral sweep and country. When he dies, people will fall over each other to praise him. Where are they now when he is still very, very funny and still very much alive?

Low, The Great Destroyer (Sub Pop Records)

They've been around so long, you probably take them for granted, note that they have a new record but never bother picking it up. But, strangely resilient year after year, this Duluth trio bring the noise even if that noise is no longer cool and/or hot and/or hip and/or now. Reflective and melodic, they can still be sinister (the opening track "Monkey") and quiet-to-loud (the defiant "When I Go Deaf") when they so desire. Slowcore, it used to be called. Or shoegazer — remember that? Alan Sparhawk flirts with the idea of not writing songs anymore, putting down that guitar. Don't believe him, thank god.

Mos Def, The New Danger (Geffen Records)

Too black, too strong, but he also goes on a little too long here. Mr. Def is tougher musically and thematically than his old partner Talib Kweli; he recognizes that an enlightened mind needs a soundscape people want to bother with. So Mos gives us dank guitars and back-alley grimness — if he needs the money, he can probably sell these tracks to movie studios to make their gangsta pictures seem relevant. This is not an album you hear straight through, marveling at every second. Go for 25 minutes, but don't shuffle around — sequencing is important when you work conceptually. The songs' gritty flow from one to another will enhance every tune here. And biting off more than you can chew about society's ills is a fault more hip-hoppers should really look into.

Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse (Geffen Records)

When bands hang around long enough, their members have almost a telepathic connection to one another; they intuitively know what each player will do next on stage. Bands' fans can be that way too, which is why we know all these songs before we even hear them. Not a bad thing, mind you — without the post-9/11 tension that gripped 2002's Murray Street, they settle into the assured conscientious-objector groove of their latest. Kim's and Thurston's songs sound as tender and familiar as their good marriage to one another, but Lee, as usual, is the secret weapon. He beats his comrades with "Paper Cut Exit," his kind of zigzag guitar thrasher, a little snarl to cut through all the sonic beauty and weirdness. If they aren't going to make any more straight-A albums, then a steady stream of A-minuses is entirely fine.

Bright Eyes, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning and Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (Saddle Creek Records)

"If you want to see the future," the snot-nosed know-it-all sang in 2002, "go stare into a cloooooouuuuud!" Now 24, he repeats the line on one of his two new albums, knowing full well how stupid he must have sounded back then. Abandoning affected vocals for honest expression, he's no less smarty-pants but his self-doubt and hip poetic musings go down smoother. Might be because the music has developed, might be because he's not as interested it letting his big mouth carry the day. One album is acoustic, one is electronic. Get them both and watch how well they play off one another.

Saint Etienne, Travel Edition 1990-2005 (Sub Pop Records)

They were always too middling to focus on album to album, so a best-of makes sense. At 18 tracks, this is them, pushing a thin idea beyond its abilities, either hoping no one would notice or just loving the hell out of their limitations. Near as I can figure, they specialized in dance music for smart people who don't actually dance. It's the idea of dance music, really — but too literate, too nicely dressed to get properly sweaty or nasty. Sarah Cracknell sang the songs, the girlie ghost in this nifty little contraption, more girl-next-door than hey-who's-that. In small doses, I love this — after more than 45 minutes or so, I tire of it. And, if these truly are their greatest hits, their peak moment was on a Neil Young song.

The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (Fireside)

Rolling Stone lives and dies by the rock canon, so this is not where you go to prove to friends that, say, the Beatles are totally overrated. But what will surprise you when you pore through the oldies — Dylan, Beatles, Stones, Young, Bowie — is who they picked to overview them: Rob Sheffield. As a music commentator, Sheffield can be as cheeky as anybody you'd find on VH1, but he's exceptionally insightful too. I don't ask him to agree with me (too much), but I do ask that he convince me that he's given these acts considerable contemplation. And that he has. Plus, his Steely Dan and Randy Newman appraisals are as clever as the artists themselves. Other writers spotlight other groups in this fourth edition, but Sheffield, leading the pack, demonstrates how rock critics can be entertaining and informative and entirely reputable human beings.

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