Except that Hard Candy's disclosures aren't going to scare any gargoyles off the Vatican wall, not these days. Now that Britney Spears has raised (lowered?) the bar on scandal, Madonna's dirtiest records cound cute, not hazardous. But it's fun to hear her negotiate the contours of Top 40 pop for the first time since Like a Prayer, without any European house music hose-head gumming up the pleasure and catharsis with meditative schmaltz. Timberland and Pharrell could have used their standard off-kilter bass-drum thump and skanking acoustic strums to give Madonna the same safe-to-slutty makeover Timberland gave Nelly Furtado. But respect for her orginality won out, and they invoke bubbly electro synths of early Madonna and the squishy grooves of early-'80s Price/ Rick James funk to invent slinky, playful music with undercurrents of adorable psychosexual intrigue. In updated renditions of her girlishly predatory prime, she relishes the "Super Feak" bass nookie on "Give It 2 Me," chases down a young Madonna wannabe going after her man (or maybe her fans) on "She's Not Me" and hawks her reconstituted hotness on a title track that's her take on glucose-tolerant pop-rap like 50 Cent's "Candy Shop." There's some corniness: on "Spanish Lessons," she takes the MILF theme too far by primising to nail us if we do our homework; and "Beat Goes On" has Kanye West's laziest self-brownnosing cameo ever. But these are minor bumps on the road to bench-pressing some Brazilian bar-back in an alley behind the club while ignoring Guy Ritchie's IT's 4 BLEEDING AM. WHERE R U? TEST MESSAGES. The record ends with two stormy, suggestive Timberland tracks: "Devil Wouldn't Recognize You," which sounds like "Cry Me a River" slow orchestral hip-hop complete with rainstorm and midnight church bells and Justin moaning something about masters and slaves while Madonna moans something about hanging on ledges and how well she once moved and may yet move again. they're tortured; they're hot. they push Madonna's love back over a border-line it seemed she'd never see again. --

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