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There was a reason Pansy Division’s Total Entertainment felt like an anticipated release.

The band’s previous album, 1998’s Absurd Pop Song Romance, was an accomplished work, well-written, tightly-performed, insightful but not heavy-handed.

It was a damn good album.

But the five years between the release of Absurd Pop Song Romance and Total Entertainment pretty much diffused the momentum building up to the creation said album.

Pansy Division started out closer to being a gay version of the Dead Milkmen, riffing on gay themes in a comical manner.

History (i.e., old magazine articles) states the band’s opening slot on tours with Green Day forced it to grow up, which resulted in More Lovin’ from Our Oven and Absurd Pop Song Romance.

But Pansy Division decided to reign in that momentum, spent a few years playing locally, then set out again to record a new album.

As the parlance goes, the members have gone back to their roots. Too bad.

Total Entertainment pretty much sings to the choir. “Alpine Skiing” describes a bedroom technique that doesn’t really apply to a lesbian audience. “When He Comes Home” and “I’m Alright” imagine what Phil Spector would have done with a ’60s guy group.

And “No Protection” goes as far as believing in life after love in the chorus. Or rather life after refusing unprotected sex. Something like that.

On a few instances, Pansy Division attempts to write songs that speak more universally to the dynamics of relationship, gender matching regardless.

But “Too Many Hoops” and “Saddest Song” just don’t possess enough subtlety to address more than gay (white) men.

There are some hints of the more mature Pansy Division from half a decade back. “Spiral” is probably the only song in existence dealing with same-sex domestic violence, and “Not Good Enough” just plain burns.

The more serious material on the album is stashed closer to the end, but it takes effort to get through all the novelty to reach that point.

And novelty is fine, but Pansy Division has done it better before.

Around the time Pansy Division released Total Entertainment in summer 2003, the Advocate pointed out they were pretty much the only punk band made up of gay men.

Lesbians, on the other hand, have a pretty storied indie rock history — Team Dresch, Le Tigre, Lucsious Jackson (in part), Sleater-Kinney (ditto). There’s even a label dedicated to indie rock by lesbians — Mr. Lady Records.

As I type, I bet some enterprising college student is writing some thesis on why lesbians make better rock musicians. Not to slag Stephin Merritt or Elton John — but can you really raise a fist to their music?

With the Butchies, you can.

After three albums on Mr. Lady, the lesbian trio has moved to Yep Roc for its fourth album, Make Yr Life.

Butchies albums are pretty brisk, and Make Yr Life is no exception. From start to finish, the trio hammers each song, none clocking more than 3 1/2 minutes.

Kaia Wilson’s voice possesses the same kind of sweetness and urgency that makes Sleater-Kinney a perennial favorite. And the band is jackhammer tight.

When Wilson commands, “fake fake fake your fear” on the title track, drummer Melissa York and bassist Alison Martlew literally pound the point home.

The band doesn’t obfuscate the gay themes in their music, nor are they blatant about it. “17” paints a picture of teenage uncertainty, in which the protagonist “smokes fags with fags”.

And “She’s So Lovely” is about what the title suggests.

The only mixed bag on the album is the concluding cover of the Outfield’s “Your Love”. The slow-downed interpretation is a nice reading of the song, but after witnessing the Butchies prove its heavy mettle, it’s disappointing not to hear the band approach the song with the same bombast of the original.

(And man, would that rock if they did!)

The Butchies offer yet another notch in a growing tally of lesbian rockers, and Make Yr Life is an excellent entry. Now if only gay men could catch up.

Don’t even mention Judas Priest or Queen.

I could write this review pretty fast.

To get a sense of Junior Senior’s D-D-Don’t Stop That Beat, listen to the first track on repeat 11 times.

Hell, you could just listen to the first track and stop right there.

Sure, that one expository track — pick any, actually; it doesn’t quite matter — is actually a pretty interesting mash-up of party rock and disco samples. And yes, that Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics sticker on the cover is very well earned.

But after a while, D-D-Don’t Stop That Beat becomes a blur, kind of like the chemical-induced party atmosphere such albums are intended to foster.

Even the B-52’s knew when to mix it up a bit.

“White Trash” comes pretty close, indulging in a garage rock sludge closer to MC5. But it comes at the very end of the album, too late to do the rest of it any good.

The bonus material tacked onto the US edition of the album only serves to reinforce Junior Senior’s homogenity. In fact, the live version of “Move Your Feet” makes it clear the band’s material works best in the studio.

To its credit, Junior Senior is something of a shining beacon out there in these times of musical uncertainty. Between all the bands trying to sound like Joy Division, Television or the Stooges, it’s nice to see Fatboy Slim’s efforts have not gone totally obsolete.

And yes, D-D-Don’t Stop That Beat is a party record, which means it’s not exactly aiming for high art.

That doesn’t excuse it from being just plain annoying after a while.

This is one one-trick pony with a really quick shelf life.

Man, what a show-off.

Quoting Maurice Ravel’s Bolero in the middle of the opening track on an album? That’s so gay.

But Rufus Wainwright has never really hidden that fact — that he’s a show-off.

Back in 1998, I tried to get through the first couple of tracks on his self-titled debut but couldn’t do it — Wainwright was just way too heavy-handed with his songwriting smarts.

He reigned them in for 1991’s Poses, an album on which he claims he “sold out”. But on Want One — the first of what was originally intended to be a two-volume set (again with the showing off) — he’s loosened his grip on that reign.

But not too much.

Wainwright characterizes Want as his hangover album, and there’s a lushness to it that seems measured. He’s not afraid to bring in the strings and the orchestra at the appointed dramatic climax of a song, but he isn’t obliged to get Andrew Lloyd Webber on a listener’s ass either.

Okay, maybe he does get theatrical on the 7-minute “Go or Go Ahead”, and on “Beautiful Child” and “14th Street”.

But the orchestral touches on “Movies of Myself” and “I Don’t Know What It Is” don’t overpower the songs themselves. And on “Natasha”, they suite Wainwright beautifully.

On other tracks, it’s just him and that piano. “Pretty Things” is just that.

Wainwright’s voice has gotten better, too. In the beginning, he sounded like he sipped from the same helium balloon that propelled Shiina Ringo’s singing on her debut album.

But when he lets his voice out for that big moment, he can handle himself well enough.

Want One isn’t as singles-ready as Poses — which isn’t saying much since “California” was really the only single-ready track on that album — but it does house some nice performances by Wainwright. And it’s the performance moreso than the writing that ultimately seduces.

He’s still a show-off, that Rufus Wainwright, but he’s not as precocious about it anymore.

Looking back, 69 Love Songs — it wasn’t that great.

Sure, it’s quite a feat for one person to set out to write 100 love songs, only to pare it down by 31 just so a single evening performance doesn’t stretch more than three hours.

And it’s quite amazing one person would pretty much play all the instruments and sing all 69 songs.

And of course, props must be given for sticking to a single theme for all 69 pieces of music.

But the Magnetic Fields’ 1999 epic isn’t immune to the perils of any multi-volume album — there’s a point where a writer has just gotta pad.

Five years later, it’s pretty tough to sit through even the first 23 of those 69.

i, the Magnetic Fields’ follow-up album, could have easily been considered a fourth volume of an increasingly, inaccurately named trilogy of love songs.

Thankfully, head honcho Stephin Merritt opted for a different conceit — all the song titles on the album start with the letter “I”. But all of them deal with that most versatile of themes, nonetheless: love.

So why prattle on about how much 69 Love Songs doesn’t age very well? Because i achieves better results with a fraction of the quantity.

Merritt once again lets his home studio muse apply cabaret-style writing to a myriad of genres. Hell, he even does a bit of techno (“I Thought You Were My Boyfriend”.)

Maybe it’s the major label budget, but i sounds richer than its predecessor, even though Merritt sticks to the same timbral pallette — cello, violin, guitar, banjo, ukelele and the cheapest damn sounding Kurzweil 2000 on the planet.

Better still is Merritt’s writing, which benefits from focusing on 14 tracks than 69.

“I Wish I Had an Evil Twin” indulges in some clever id fantasies, but the song’s protagonist has enough sense to admit “evil is not my cup of tea”.

The line about “ampersand and ampersand” is pretty clever on “I Don’t Believe You”, but I wonder if he really meant ellipses. (“So you quote love unquote me” is a better line.)

“Is This What They Used to Call Love” could easily be sung by a jazz singer or a Broadway performer, but Merritt places the song close to the end of the album, which heightens its drama just a bit more.

Sequencing is such a lost art.

Perhaps that’s what makes i easier to digest than 69 Love Songs — i is an album, whereas 69 Love Songs is just a songbook. There’s a better sense of direction on i, which makes all the genre-jumping seem more organic.