New Kids Score Block Party

Critics applaud the comeback album from reunited boy band New Kids on the Block, which, while it “may not break any ground musically,” is in fact “the best album of their multi-platinum career,” writes Glenn Gamboa in Newsday. “The best cuts” on The Block “exude an understated confidence the old New Kids never had,” Mikael Wood adds in the Los Angeles Times.

The New Kids have “been around long enough to know what a hit sounds like,” adds Wood. The album is full of collaborations with the likes of Timbaland, Ne-Yo, and the Pussycat Dolls, and “they mostly work,” Jed Gottlieb observes in the Boston Herald. Overall, he writes, expect “a little maturity, a little teen pop and lots of sexy, modern R&B.” (More New Kids on the Block stories.)