[This piece originally appeared in the Rage.]

On Missundaztood, her second album, Pink bravely tore up all preconceptions about herself. On her new Try This, Pink benefits from the fact that we know her better now. Once the opener, Trouble, reminds us of Pink’s bad-ass-ness, the record’s tone is established. Where Missundaztood was moody and bi-polar – one track painfully honest, the next light-hearted – Try This is largely consistent: all bad-ass, all the time.

Pink wrote most of Try This with Tim Armstrong of Rancid. Though Trouble portends a campy cohesion of her soulful, haggard voice and Armstrong’s punk energy, the resulting album is not as straightforward as the first single. Instead of ragged Rancid guitar riffs, Armstrong brings the loops and electronics from his side project, The Transplants. On Last To Know and Oh My God, he delivers an interesting blend of acoustic and electronic instruments but nothing radical. On Humble Neighborhoods, a cheesy, disco-Western backbeat (think the Village People doing “Rawhide”) makes its trouble-making narrator sound decidedly harmless. When Pink and Armstrong find loose, ska-esque grooves on Tonight’s the Night and Walk Away, the results are much more natural.

Linda Perry (who co-wrote much of Missundaztood) makes a few contributions to Try This, each a lame early-90s throwback: laughable R&B schmaltz, ridiculous self-important power-ballad, and cliché-ridden “rocker.” Had Pink lost the Perry contributions, Try This would be a leaner, meaner, better record.

Unwind, a song in which Pink identifies with Janis Joplin, may sum up a good deal of the ambivalence of this album. One of Pink’s talents hasn’t been looking forward so much as choosing influences (4 Non Blondes, Rancid) from her childhood through which to express herself. Certainly, her style has found a huge audience, but its challenge to the mainstream is not a radical new direction but a honing of sounds overlooked late in the 20th Century. That said, Try This will likely make the Pink devotees even more devoted. Pink tapped a rich vein of adolescent female angst with her previous record, and Try This capitalizes on that. The brazen, outspoken and brave Pink still stands in sharp contrast to the Britneys and Christinas of the world and pop music needs that attitude.