Downloads

Surfing the Web for new music, video and MP3 downloads can be a serious time investment. Picks from Times staff and contributors will help take the drag out of click-and-drag music choices. Some downloads may contain explicit lyrics. All are free, except as noted.

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“Let Me Talk

to You/My Love”

Justin Timberlake, featuring T.I.

www.stereogum.com

Justin Timberlake’s second video from his current album represents a clear triumph of style over substance. As a piece of erotic art, it fails to titillate, offering up the equivalent of animatronic porn, something barely human. But as choreography, wedding movement to rhythm -- credit the beats to Timbaland -- it succeeds wildly.

Each move is minutely scripted and executed to perfection, with a dance troupe performing seductive Jerome Robbins-like moves that are sadly undercut by hard, rhythmic editing. An extended intro involving Timbaland and Timberlake, both sartorially resplendent, use the word “heh” as a rhythmic element before transitioning into robotic funk. From that point, the video becomes a dance engine, while Timberlake and T.I. sing and rap against a periwinkle background.

“I Got a Baby”

Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps

www.myspace.com/genevincent1

Gene Vincent died Oct. 21, 1971, of an ulcer whose complications had arisen from years of alcohol abuse. At that point, his career had been in decline, and his memory lay principally in the realm of rockabilly enthusiasts and outlaw bikers. Over the years, this injustice has been corrected, and many now regard him as the truest contemporary competitor of Elvis. Certainly few performers in the history of rock ‘n’ roll have had Vincent’s feral intensity and charisma on stage, bending down with mike stand, gazing upward at the rafters and dragging his injured leg across stage. No satisfactory early video exists of Vincent and his first Blue Caps (with guitar maestro Cliff Gallup), but you can toast his memory with this somewhat obscure track. Gallup is not on it, most likely it is Johnny Meeks, but original drummer Dickie Harrell is wailing away.

“U and UR Hand”

Pink

www.hitsdailydouble.com/home/home.cgiThe video explores female power, its usage, its abuse and, like many of Pink’s videos, operates on many levels of mimicry, pastiche and irony. Her archetypal character, Lady Delish, is a literary concoction divided into several skits and identities. In each one, men are teased, dismissed, but, smart as Pink is, she delivers a commentary on relations between the sexes and the potential corruption of this female empowerment. Various recognizable personalities are impersonated, and, ultimately, like the best of irony, the viewer is left wondering where the true perspective lies. It is a video to make you think, but if thought proves formidable, there is always the slamming track itself -- as rocking as anything put out by any young emo band at the moment.

casey.dolan@latimes.com

- CASEY DOLAN