New CDs: Catchy Maroon 5; Chris Brown, trouble magnet; Ian Tyson keeps on; Ali Ryerson's jazz flute
Pop
Maroon 5
Overexposed
(A&M/Octone 
It's hard to stay on top with music styles mutating so fast. Maroon 5 has apparently accomplished this via some sort of Faustian pact, trading in the soul that made its 2007 CD It Won't Be Soon Before Long such a joy for the machine-tooled dance-pop of last year's comeback single, "Moves Like Jagger." Overexposed has a couple of similar electro-rousers, "One More Night" and "Payphone," that are catchier than a computer virus. But far too much of this album sounds lazy, calculated, and, yes, even strident. I'm looking at you, "Lucky Strike." David Hiltbrand
Chris Brown
Fortune
(RCA
Whether punching or being punched, Chris Brown is a magnet for controversy. There's always some scrape Brown is in the middle of, whether it involves a woman (Rihanna) or a rival (Drake).
Luckily, the 23-year-old R&B singer with the elastic baritone is capable of souped-up modern soul far bolder than any headline. With each record since 2009's Graffiti, the charismatic Brown, a onetime prince of pop-hop, has become increasingly dependent on techno-trickery and sleek sequenced beats. The result of such electronically induced revisionism is an AutoTuned erotica of sorts, with the mature Brown as the ultimate RoboRomancer on the Eurocentric likes of "Strip." Motor-driven machismo and steely sexuality aren't all Brown's thinking about. While dance-club life gets its due on the clunky "Bassline" and the slinky "Turn Up the Music," hanging at the strip club and getting "medicated" is the subject of "Till I Die." With military electro-beats behind him and rappers Big Sean and Wiz Khalifa, "Die" races at an up-tempo clip until hitting upon "Said she wanna check the poll / I said OK Sarah Palin." If this is Brown hitting up po! litical controversy, he may have another fight on his hands.
A.D. Amorosi
Kitty Pryde
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