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  EW Review: Pink alive and kickingAlso: Hooky Morrissey, crafted Toby KeitBy Chris Willman  YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(Entertainment Weekly) -- Do we detect just the barest trace of defensiveness in the title of Pink's fourth album? Like maybe she thinks we think it's time to break out the defibrillators on her flatlining career? It's not as dire as that: Fewer than five years have passed since her quintuple-platinum breakthrough, 2001's M!ssundaztood, married the frothiness of the teen-pop times to the singer-songwriter tradition and came up with a swell new genre: confessional bubblegum. But 2003's tossed-off follow-up, Try This, was a washout, and we do live in a ''one strike and you're pushing up daisies'' world. Happily, with I'm Not Dead, our heroine has rediscovered that plot she lost. The new album doesn't completely jettison the previous one's attempt to reimagine Pink as a punky Joan Jett type, but it does do a much better job of recalling how, at her peak, Jett had great pop instincts, too. In superior tracks that combine rock's old-fashioned roar with contemporary, heavy-breathing beats, Pink becomes a new breed of automotive hybrid: Britney Benatar. For the first half of that equation, it doesn't hurt that she's enlisted erstwhile teen-pop titan Max Martin (who -- oops! -- has done it again, following Kelly Clarkson's ''Since U Been Gone'' with more unlikely femme power chords). Martin produced and co-wrote three corkers, including one that's destined to be an instant word-of-mouth smash: the irresistibly rude ''U + Ur Hand,'' in which Pink tells a drunken club suitor just whom he'll be having sex with later (the title provides the answer). Pink tends to be as good as her key co-conspirators, and she's also well served by two other producer/co-writers. Butch Walker (Avril Lavigne) shares credit on the perfectly realized ''Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely),'' a pissy yet affectionate rocker that throws down competing desires for attentiveness and space in a relationship. Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple) gives the assist on ''I Got Money Now,'' the saddest exultation of wealth as cure-all since ''Money Changes Everything.'' Unfortunately, there's a fourth collaborator, Billy Mann, who turns out to be Pink's go-to guy for overearnest clinkers. Their current hit, ''Stupid Girls,'' has some verve. But smart girls can safely skip over ''Nobody Knows,'' a stab at Xtina-style balladic solipsism; ''The One That Got Away,'' her apparent Joplin biopic audition tape; ''Dear Mr. President,'' with its incongruous folkie social concern and Bush-baiting applause lines; and ''Conversations With My 13 Year Old Self,'' a good argument for the American Psychological Association to finally ban ''inner child'' therapy. But even her misses are ballsier and blusterier than most everybody else's recent hits. And with the best two-thirds or so of Dead, she's put in the work and come up with the hooks to justify all that hubris de vivre. Creatively speaking -- and probably financially, too -- Pink is back in the black. EW Grade: B+ 'Ringleader of the Tormentors,' MorrisseyReviewed by Raymond Fiore It ain't easy being Moz, but at least the icon of self-loathing can take heart in his refined miserableness. Not the invigorating wake-up that was 2004's You Are the Quarry, his new album, Ringleader of the Tormentors -- recorded in Rome with producer Tony Visconti (David Bowie) -- feels more like an elegiac memoir. Harrowingly beautiful violins abound on ''Dear God, Please Help Me,'' but all instruments only serve to accent, for better or worse, Morrissey's still-hooky torch-singer confessions. EW Grade: B 'White Trash With Money,' Toby KeithReviewed by Chris Willman The title perpetuates Toby Keith's image of choice, but except for the opening and closing tracks, this is one of his least ''trashy'' efforts. Like his last album, this one's less about attitude than song craft, with plenty of subliminal homage to the '70s country he grew up on; tracks 2-4 even have terribly unfashionable string arrangements. If it had been more than 11 months between albums, "White Trash With Money" -- the first release on Keith's own label -- might have even choicer cuts, but like the similarly indie-minded Prince, Keith is valuing prodigiousness over being a prodigy. EW Grade: B Click Here 
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