The Guardian's Alexis Petridis goes against all expectations and finds something nice to say about Madonna's American Life today. Here are the good bits:

Finally, and most importantly, she starts coming up with the sort of sublime pop melodies that are noticeably absent from the first half of the album. "Nothing Fails" has a wonderful choral finale. "Intervention" marries a New Order-like ambience to a chorus that one of those Swedish pop factories would kill to come up with. The closing "Easy Ride" is fantastic.

And:

American Life's best tracks make a mockery of virtually all other current pop music.

It does read like he's striving for something nice to say about it, however, as he makes the rest of the album sound totally risible — a track about "Hollywood" not being as wonderful as some people might think, sung in a fake little girl voice, plus "songs about how great her kids are, what a tragedy her mother's early death was, and what an all-round credit to the human race Guy Ritchie is".

I'm sure there'll be a few thousand more reviews before it's released, but the signs don't look too good for it being anything other than Music Part 2. Which is a damn shame. As much as I find her increasingly ludicrous and sappy, part of me still wants her to make an amazing comeback and play a part in dragging mainstream music away from the antiseptic, self-congratulatory constrictions that now make it such a anodyne sham....