There are five albums and four singles reviewed in this column. But you want to know about Batman Begins, right? I can't blame you — all I want to do is talk about it, too.

Batman Begins (Warner Bros. Pictures)

With Memento, Christopher Nolan reinvented the indie thriller, giving it class, soul, smarts, and a compulsive watchability. And now he's done it with the summer franchise blockbuster. A film that manages to be both darker than Tim Burton's vision and funnier than Joel Schumacher's doomed efforts, Batman Begins achieves what Episode III vainly claimed: It gives us an empathetic back story for our characters and explains what informed their motivations in an emotional, entertaining way. Christian Bale handles both sides of the Batman/Bruce Wayne performance, slyly reinventing his Patrick Bateman character from America Psycho as a knowingly contemptible disguise to hide a much more conflicted inner life. What you take away from the movie isn't the characters or the set pieces but, rather, the tone: fatalistic but not cheaply nihilistic, intelligent but not superior, grown-up but not no-fun. You don't cheer along, you sit there hushed and moved and fully engaged by its boldly operatic inventiveness. (Even the score is dynamic.) Nolan's action directing could be cleaner, and you can feel certain popcorn conventions sticking out awkwardly as if to assure everyone that, don't worry, this movie is still the product of a big studio wanting to make $300 million domestic. But a film this determinedly, beautifully slow-building and ominous is a rare feat, summertime or otherwise.

The White Stripes, Get Behind Me Satan (V2 Records)

"Blue Orchid," the lead single, opening track, and would-be rock anthem, is a trick meant to throw off the foolish. Get Behind Me Satan is a quiet, somber, moody album about love withering away. Last time Jack White wrote such an expansive breakup record, he was younger, and his anger was unwieldy and appropriate for his age. Now, he's less furious, more depressed: God, is this the way it's always gonna be? He writes a hoedown to take his mind off his troubles; he unplugs the guitar to take a long, dark look in the mirror; he pines for Rita Hayworth as an object of sophistication, lust, and doomed relationships. If Elephant fans hate all this, well, screw them for shortsightedness.

The Go-Betweens, Oceans Apart (Yep Roc Records)

If, like me, you've heard endless praises about this little Australian group but never took the plunge, no better time than the present, right? They consist of two songwriters, one of whom, Grant McLennan, I know from his great romantic solo records. The other, Robert Forster, who can be seen inside the CD booklet holding a book under his arm, remembers his childhood and a particularly wonderful woman with the same mixture of nostalgia and detachment. Usually, their songs are pure Beatles from around Rubber Soul: acoustic guitars that shimmer as if touched by the gods, lyrics that sigh and occasionally bite. They can turn up the volume to keep things interesting, but even then it's awfully pretty. For the die-hard fans, this is another breakthrough. For the rest of us, it's a solid record we'll admire and respect even if we forever wish we loved it more.

Bruce Springsteen, Devils & Dust (Sony Records)

I'm glad I didn't bother listening until after the pre-release hype died down. Free of the critical hand-wringing and op-ed newspaper commentaries, you can sensibly recognize that this is a Springsteen album through and through, but it's not as barrel-chested or "meaningful" as The Rising. No longer speaking in messages, he mostly attains the simple-folk humility he hasn't known in his real life since 1984. The last time he was this acoustic, on The Ghost of Tom Joad a decade ago, he overdid the place-name reporting and immigrant angst, choking his earnest commentary on too many words and not enough melody. By contrast, Devils & Dust's strongest asset is its hushed insignificance, its dejected sonic shrug. The songs are the right kind of slight — their narrators are too meaningless in the context of the real world to demand our attention. Which is the point, Springsteen seems to be saying. And his determination not to say Important Things actually makes you want to hover over these delicate songs and ponder these miserable, honest lives. All the standard Bruce objections apply, but at least there are fewer to deal with now that he no longer seems to envision himself as a noble missionary of truth, justice, and 9/11. Long story short, Devils & Dust is his best since the underrated Lucky Town, which also relaxed the big sermons until all that was left was a very talented songwriter we once knew and loved.

Stephen Malkmus, Face the Truth (Matador Records)

Whether fronting Pavement or flying solo, Malkmus rarely writes songs that announce themselves. They curlicue and mumble at first; a week later, they're engrained into your subconscious, their mysteries unfurling with delicious assurance. You'd think I'd learn by now, but once again I doubted his resilience on Face the Truth, a title I took to mean that Stephen had realized he'd run out of gas. Where were the hooks?, I wondered. Hell, where were the structures? Stupid of me to worry. Those who cut and run early will miss out on quite a bit. "Freeze the Saints" isn't his loveliest ballad, but it's a nice addition to the repertoire. "I've Hardly Been" demonstrates he still has a knack for the absurdly hypnotic. Overall, his solo career remains too stubbornly obscure to win over a lot of new fans. But if you've gotten this far in the review, trust me, you want to add this to your collection.

The Pernice Brothers, Discover a Lovelier You (Ashmont Records)

With Joe Pernice, you can always rely on some beautiful depression. (His signature lyric, "I hate my life," was sung with an utterly gorgeous melody attached.) He's not profoundly perking up with this new record, but the music's growing livelier, less down-in-the-mouth than usual. Acoustic guitars are still his secret weapon, choruses that make you weep like 10,000 simultaneous beautiful sunsets still his weakness. When he's on, his despondency cuts through the schmaltz, and "Red Desert" and "Amazing Glow" would make for terrific funeral music. Which I mean in a very good way.

The Arcade Fire, "Cold Wind" (from Six Feet Under, Volume 2, Music from the Original HBO Series, Astralwerks)

I haven't listened to Funeral in a good long while — when a song from it came on the radio, I made a mental note, telling myself again that they weren't as great as everyone says, and then moved on. But when I heard this soundtrack contribution on the radio the first time, I instantly knew it was the Arcade Fire because of Win Butler's rangy voice. And I caught myself actually paying attention to the band for the first time in months: those childlike-not-naive arrangements, that sense of a community of safe, loving people. Funeral is still mildly overrated, but once everyone else finally gets sick of this band, I might be able to give it the respect it's due.

Paul Anka, "Everybody Hurts" and "Jump" (from Rock Swings, Verve Records)

The joke is, "Hey, look! Paul Anka is a lame crooner and he's doing rock songs!" Except with both of these songs, he doesn't ham it up, phone it in, or take it too seriously. R.E.M.'s adult-contemporary ballad has been begging for reinterpretation after years of radio overkill, and when inspired, David Lee Roth could write a lyric, which Anka figures out how to make his own. The line between self-parody and honest expression is so frighteningly thin that it's artistry enough that the guy manages to squeeze in there somehow.

Foo Fighters, "Best of You" (from In Your Honor, RCA Records)

I'm not somebody who puts an arbitrary age limit on my rock stars. But at 36, Dave Grohl is sounding over the hill. The volume on his amps can still reach double digits, and lord knows he still brings his trademark wail when he so decides. But what once was a deserving second act after Nirvana's sad destruction has become one more "modern rock" band that survives on brand recognition. He's past getting mad at Courtney Love, past mourning for his friend Kurt Cobain. Now he's bored and old.

The Black Eyed Peas, "Don't Phunk with My Heart" (from Monkey Business, A&M Records)

Although I admit I didn't appreciate "Where Is the Love?" at first either, I feel confident saying that there's no here here. Trying to keep up the momentum from a fluke hit album whose ludicrousness was its charm, this follow-up single feels entirely processed and calculated. The fun of "Let's Get It Started" was how it fit with the guilty pleasures of the NBA Finals. The phunk here is so phlat that it deserves to send them back to the used bins from which they came.