And the verdict after the second listen?

So we've given it 24 hours. We've given a couple more 'spins'. We've made the painful decision to retract our previous (and hasty) proclamation of "Amazing". And we'd like to give it a "Good".

This is Britney Spears back to her pop princess best. Clearly. A mixture of good dance songs and well-written ballads, produced by the best names in the business. But that isn't the Britney Spears we fell in love with. We were quite clearly in Camp Christina before we got our hands on the masterpiece that is Blackout. We used to regard Britters with disdain - she was far too saccharine for us, far too 'American'. Even her snog with Madge annoyed us, because it took all the limelight while Chrissy's equally sexy snog was ignored in favour of Justin Timbertwat's reaction. We wiped the slate clean with Blackout though; we couldn't deny that album was pure pop gold. Walls of dirty synths, simple and sexy lyrics; it made you want to dance, it made you want to writhe. Perfect.

Circus feels like as good a reflection on Britney in her current frame of mind as Blackout did. Which I guess, is what it's supposed to do. It sounds very controlled, as if every song is trying to project a particular image. We don't buy it. We still love "Unusual You", and even found ourselves getting into a ballad last night.. we think it was "Out from Under". But we don't want this from Britney. Not after spending the past 12 months bumplaying Blackout every chance we got. Are we in the wrong? Maybe we shouldn't have expected another Blackout.

If Britney needs to be a nutcase, forgetting she has children and snorting cocaine from Paris Hilton's labia in order to produce a mind-blowing album... well that's a sad state of affairs.