** Elastica, “The Menace,” Atlantic.

Taking five years to follow a promising, bracing debut, this English band offers just 39 minutes of music--35 without the pointless version of Trio’s novelty “Da Da Da.” Sadly, the rest of “The Menace” (in stores Tuesday) is merely frothy punk/new wave exercises evoking X-Ray Specs here, B-52’s there and adding up to pretty much nothing. Justine Frischmann projects some barbed attitude (“Your Arse My Place”), but only on the moody “My Sex” does she dig inside herself.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.