Black Eyed Peas: 'The E.N.D.'

'Boom Boom Pow', 'Rock That Body', 'Alive', 'Party All The Time', 'Out Of My Head'... a quick scan of the tracklisting gives you a pretty good idea of what The E.N.D. is about. You want Eurodancey club bangers, Chic-referencing disco, nods to 80s funk, will.i.am hollering "Mozoltov!" and Fergie pretending to be too p**sed to remember the bridge? You've come to the right place - the first Black Eyed Peas album in four years is a 70-minute bop-til-you-drop party record.

At first, it's a blast. Lead single 'Boom Boom Pow' deserves its two recent spells at number one, 'Rock That Body' and 'I Gotta Feeling' are ace collaborations with Kelly Rowland's mate David Guetta, and 'Alive' works a similar neo-disco groove to the will.i.am-produced 'American Boy'. The slinky 'Meet Me Halfway', meanwhile, tips its cap to vintage Prince. Of course, none of these songs has any more depth than a shot of tequila, and couplets like "Lookin' all fly and s**t, I'm-a-be the flyest chick" are typical, but when the beats are this good it's silly to get wound up.

Trouble is, this party starts to lose its sparkle around the half-way mark, exposing the fact that Black Eyed Peas don't so much walk a line between catchy and annoying as hopscotch over it with gay abandon. The worst offenders? 'Ring-A-Ling', a song about phone sex that's more likely to induce a migraine than an erection, and an electro-dancehall monstrosity called 'Electric City'. "B**ches on my dick," Fergie raps in an inexplicable cod-Jamaican accent. "Oh no, they on my dildo." Thanks for clearing that up, Stace.

Worse still, there's a misguided eleventh hour attempt to get serious. At the end of 'Showdown', a big, important-sounding voice asks: 'What happens to the economy?', a question as timely as it is tricky. Three minutes later, on a track called 'Now Generation', Fergie offers a potential solution: "So take your debt and your credit and stick it up your ass and do it now!" Like any party, The E.N.D. has its highs and lows, its moments of euphoria and embarrassment, bits you won't remember and bits you wish you could forget. The key, as with any party that goes on too long, is knowing when to leave.