Consumer Guide Album

Pink: The Truth About Love [RCA, 2012]
Proving you can get as much variety out of a tempestuous marriage as out of the bar life your temporary breakups leave on the table, Pink and her 21 collaborators fashion a recorded image of her feisty, heartfelt, all-over-the-place love/sex life. Until the last two songs, whose overwrought drama I don't have to like just because I trust its verisimilitude, they hit every time. The comic-only-not title track is perfect if not necessarily the truth, followed for me by the introductory "Are We All We Are" (its title transformed into a chorus-chanted hide-and-seek readymade) and the see-ya "Slut Like You" ("I'm not a slut/I just love love"). Then again, I'm a known sucker for feisty. So note that I'm also taken with the acoustic duet she shares with fellow babymama Lily Allen. And although it's true that I'd rather hear Robyn sing "Try," it's also true that I think "Try" is good enough for Robyn. A