It’s an ambitious album, but only in the sense that most of the songs are outrageously long and feature approximately eighteen gratuitous time signatures each.

For the most part, what hampers the recording is a reliance on a single type of musical form: the vamp. Over simple (and endlessly repetitive) chordal structures, the players just noodle.

Despite a few quality tracks, the album feels wholly uninventive and listless.

The kids will tolerate Maladroit, and probably many more dull records just like it, because it’s a product of Weezer.

Over rudimentary, skiffle-derived hooks, a kitchen-sink orchestra creates an aura of portent. Then in steps Meloy, doping up the whole affair with empty melancholy until it has to breathe through a tube, wailing big words in a forced accent that conveys despair but fails to signify its cause, fails to signify anything.

A love of/obsession with antiquity can, at some point, become unbearable. To my ears, The Repulsion Box is one such ridiculous period piece.

Their efforts at stretching boundaries falter because they have inscribed themselves within such narrow aesthetic parameters, hitting a fourth chord feels like a massive achievement.

It’s frustrating to hear them in this context – sounding jaded and uninspired, a slump they haven’t been in since the late ‘80s.

Unfortunately, Adem’s efforts to take his music to new places result in the abandonment of much of what made Homesongs so appealing.

A puny, ill-conceived record in comparison to both Alphabetical and its predecessor United.

Puzzles Like You... is not at all Halstead's best work, and what has sounded simple and subtle before begins to feel simplistic and blunt; the songs here move with an energy that seems either forced or mocking, and on the whole embrace the kind of triteness they used to offset.

The CD is bound to attract some fans for its unwavering dedication to psychedelic textures, not to mention the number of bodies involved in the logistics of their live show, but this is energy that should have been expended in searching for better sheet music.

The problem is that the 11-song album is exactly 10/11ths forgettable.

Thoroughly boring.

They have built up a group of songs so restless and unsatisfying that a group of teenagers with the proper training could have made them, or likely something better.

TMV’s latest major-label misfire is called The Bedlam in Goliath

Anywhere I Lay My Head falters on Johansson’s vocals, or lack of a distinctive voice.

Everything about this record, from its goopy over-production to its brooding, listless demeanor, suffers from a one-dimensionality that completely prevents connections to the listening audience.

Besides their inability to meet the very aims they set out for themselves, Clean and Zegon fail to do much of anything exciting with their all-star cast.

I ultimately found Solo Electric Bass 1 as dull as it must have been difficult to play.

What we do get is delay-drenched college rock, circa 1983.

To wit, what irritates most about Compass is the way it assaults the listener with wave after wave of sonic winks, of moments intended to be witty or clever that instead fall flat. Busy and fussily filtered at every turn, I guess it’s ‘crazy’ sounding or something, but there’s nothing communicated in the slightest.

If whining and wishing that your cat could talk is your bag, well, here's Best Coast. Now let's get burritos.

The songs can't go anywhere due to the length of the loops and the conceit of assembling them, so Huifang hisses over the "music" in this hiccuping, Fonzi-fied affectation that is one of the most blatant and unoriginal guises to come down yet in our lazy, near-sighted approximation of what we construe as challenging or worthwhile music in 2011.

Goblin is the messy schizoid splatter painting of the child we've raised and ruined, and it's coherent only as a hopeless plea for us to expect nothing from him again.

Thirty minutes of METZ feels more like hard work than fun playtimes, and the sameness of the venture underscores the futility of whatever it is they're trying to accomplish, which falls somewhere between "artist defending bowel movement on a gallery floor" and "third demo tape by an up-and-coming new band."

Scheidt is a capable acoustic guitarist with a flair for ornamentation, but well-wrought filigree does not an album make. Confronted with the choice between hearing this record again and taking a nap, I'd opt for the snooze.

Easily 30 minutes too long and four symphony orchestras too many, Human Conditions feels like a soundtrack to Barnum and Bailey, with Ashcroft’s earnest vocals drowned out by a cast of thousands.