While tracks like "So Sick" and "Stay" hit a few sweet neosoul spots, this perfectly pleasant disc is lacking that roundhouse kick that floors you.

Even if Keane hasn't completely gone down with Under The Iron Sea, the band is merely treading water here.

A disc packed with so many surefire club-ready hits it'll be impossible to avoid these jams over the next year.

The album quickly unravels into a mess of mumbled vocals, pointless guitar solos and songs that sound suspiciously unfinished.

The album bubbles with climatic ambiance and sophisticated grooves.

Afrodisiac teases more than tantalizes.

The white-boy funk routine wears thin fast, but the overbearing Broadway-style ballads are even worse.

The surprising thing about this retro rock trio is that it can actually rock.

The worst part of Tricky's comeback disc is, well, Tricky himself.

Hoobastank balances heavy riffs with dark existentialism and hooks that closely imitate that of its breakthrough hit.

The band goes a different way now, and it's not necessarily a better one.

Ultimately, like her manufactured pop rivals Ashlee Simpson and Hilary Duff, Lindsay is a little too superficial to sell us angst.

Chesney sticks with what he knows best: drinking ("Beer in Mexico"), driving ("Somebody Take Me Home") and raising his glass to everyday heroes ("Who You'd Be Today").

The album quickly reveals itself to be a muddled effort of overproduction and drab lyrics.

Merely highlights all the weak spots, like the lifeless voice, generic MOR melodies and the highly noticeable lack of Jakob being Bob.

The band's playing is mellow and freer than their tenser past outings, and frontwoman Johnette Napolitano's voice remains pleasantly husky. But some of the band's beautifully gritty venom is missing.

It sounds all too familiar.

And by classics we mean poorly produced electro songs you'll hear once, chuckle and never want to hear again--unless you have a head wound or a Sparks fetish.

This hand-clapping, disco-ball-driven journey sounds like all the other stuff in [Jay Kay's] catalog.

This isn't necessarily the best place to hear the definitive versions of Bo Diddley's "Road Runner" or Big Joe Williams' "Baby, Please Don't Go," but it's definitely the place to hear Aerosmith having the time of its life.

But even if it's only half as good as it used to be, this Call sounds okay to us.

And while it might be difficult to swallow yet another dose of hip-hop-lite and poor-me acoustic pop songs from chick-magnet lead singer Mark McGrath and gang, these Southern California boys make the everyman breeziness work for them.

Walk isn't groundbreaking as much as typical Tori Amos--a dramatic menagerie of atmospheric tracks filled with manic piano, morose characters and so many literary allusions you'll need CliffsNotes to figure 'em out.

Taken as a whole, Souljacker comes off so bleak it overwhelms the album's strengths, like its memorably catchy melodies and sonically brilliant tracks.

Neither as experimental as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot nor as accessible as McCaughey's various forays, nothing on the album really makes an impression other than a couple of throwaway lyrics and the abrupt shift between McCaughey's pinched vocal styling and Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy's coarse whisper.

The Old 97's are a good band, but Drag It Up simply isn't them at their best.

But even a busload of heavyweight producers and guests (P. Diddy, Jermaine Dupri, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the Neptunes and more) can't help this Babyface prodigy from playing it too same-y here.

Kinky, however, gets tangled up when they attempt to rock out in English, and the odd rhymes and dated '80s vibe taint their musical revolution.

[Will] leave White Stripes' fans divided.

The foursome has still not found a common sound to call its own.

The pop hooks are there, but we can't shake the feeling that the sentiments come off as phony.

But even as Santana's magic fingers sometimes struggle for a common thread here, they still do plenty of good work.

This album tends to lean more toward the psychedelic ballads, which slows down the action a little too much.

Her voice is still in fine shape, but tracks like "Fallen" and "Drifting" are so mild-mannered you have to wonder if anyone will even notice she's back.

While [Linda's] death hangs over much of Driving Rain, Macca's knack for taking a sad song and making it better means tracks like "Lonely Road," "It Must Have Been Magic," "Your Way" and "Back in the Sunshine" are redemption songs, not exercises in self-pity.

She doesn't quite act her age on teen beat-driven single "Whatchulookinat," but she makes up for it with a series of R&B standards and diva-worthy ballads that hit most of the right notes.

Unfortunately, this straightforward approach also reveals how straight-up dull Mann's country-tinged songs can be.

It lacks the raw energy and tunes that made people want to hum uncontrollably in the shower. Worse yet, the brazen confidence the Gallagher brothers displayed during the early years has faded.

The Day After sounds like something we've heard before.

When he gets it right, the rich grooves and soulful voices can be sublime, like early '70s Curtis Mayfield or Sly and the Family Stone.

Subtítulo... is not without its charms, but it borders on easy listening at times.

On "Waiting on the World to Change," Mayer breathily imagines a world where frat boys get off their couches and have people sign petitions. Sigh. A little more of that and less of noodley songs like "Vultures" and "Gravity" would have been a good step toward reminding us who Mayer really is.

At worst, a couple of the songs sound like bad Oasis remixes--"All or Nothing" comes to mind--but the good stuff can get any club (or car) hopping.

His similar-sounding interpretations lose their oomph a few tracks in.

Ultimately, it's hard to shake the feeling that something is missing.

Gone are the inspired melodies and sweet emotional turns of their past triumphant albums, replaced by boring philosophical musings and wafer-thin tunes.

We'd rather watch the Dandys than listen to 'em.

While this sounds mostly like incomplete leftovers, there are a few tasty treats: The lonely guitar of "Knives Out," that dirty beat pulsating under "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and the hypnotic body-ponging of "I Might Be Wrong."

His backing band's heavy-metal veering leans toward the generic. Only the Igster's sometimes fierce (but fading) yowl adds enough soul--and insanity--to make them at least momentarily credible.

Given that this may be your final release, this is no way to say goodbye.

This spinner of wispy, earnest vocals, sad-eyed melodies and country sensibilities lacks that special spark of passion to keep one's interest.

This is mainly just D12's other five anonymous members moaning on about the lack of credit they get by dropping the most underwhelming rhymes this side of the last Dogg Pound album.

A mixed bag at best.

Headed for a prom near you... it's the Goo Goo Dolls.

A few moody moments work, but this CD should come with a warning sticker that reads vacant.

[It] offers only occasional flashbacks to the seedy glamour of the debut, instead settling on lightweight MOR clichés.

But once those fleeting, producer-driven thrills die down, the remainder of the album takes a middle-of-the-road, midtempo stance that goes from covering her age issues on "17" to getting downright silly and insipid about looove with "Saturate Me."

Exactly as gratingly infectious as you might expect.

It's a well-produced disc, but the cavalcade of stars and cartoonish beats make the songs sound more dated than the originals.

10 mediocre new songs.

Though perfect for hipster English-lit teachers, ravenous Reed fans will find themselves saying "nevermore."

Grand Champ would make a great single. As it stands, it's about a full hour more of DMX hollering gruffly than anybody really needs.

The experiments sometimes work, but the album is mainly weighted down by cryptic religious ramblings that sap the pop life right out of it.

Nearly missing are the charming sax and violin song augmentations. Gone are the tunes that are too long but always find their way back. And gone is some of Matthew's long-faced songwriting personality--now all gussied up in a swirl of quick hits, easy ballads and electric guitar.

If she had just shown up and sang her ass off, Stripped would've been a better show.

A rather complacent set of radio-ready lite alt-rock.

Nothing here is gonna rock your world.

The actual music merely offers more of the same oddly faceless brand of heavy rock the group has been cranking out since its 2002 debut.

The transformation leaves her bland and boring, rather than bright like Britney or bold like [Michelle] Branch.

The whole deal threatens to take off occasionally, but in the end, it doesn't rise beyond meandering.

Little gems are overwhelmed by sprawling jam tracks that, well, blur into each other.

Plodding jazz-rock tunes that are 30 years old at this point.

The band sounds strong but derivative of its own best work.

The ballads sound more mawkish than ever and the rockers sound, well, a lot like bad Bruce Springsteen rip-offs.

If you're not already into it, you're not missing much.

After too many calls for the end of humanity and playing the Satan card a few times, all the yelling becomes little more than a humorless joke.

Tracks like "Lonely No More" might strike a chord because people will think it's a funky new Maroon 5 song. However, Backstreet Boys-esque ballads like "Ever the Same" and "When the Heartache Ends" are just way too much to handle.

Dated songs like "So Excited" and "Do It 2 Me" end up sounding like they're, well, 20 years old.

Shelve this one next to that Adam Sandler CD you haven't listened to in four years.

All bluster and noise and no substance.

Even Santana sounds bored, absentmindedly delivering Latin rock-influenced guitar licks behind a parade of stale melodies.

She fails to bake any new ideas, leaving us with the same old sad love songs and confused-girl anthems that the Texas torchbearer has always churned out.

A little less than half of this stuff is worth singing about.

A disc that sounds like it's... 1998.

His voice is rough, the melodies fall flat, and there's even a guitar solo by Eric Clapton.

Short on the kind of sweet 'n' simple coffeehouse ditties that made the Alaskan-born folksinger a fan favorite.

A frustratingly half-assed album, full of great ideas executed in the poorest way possible.

Even if they aren't Never Gone, their inspiration certainly is.

It's so predictable and so painfully trendy that More Than a Woman might as well have a former Mouseketeer's face on the cover.

Most of Future/Present dabbles in drab mainstream pop, with songs ranging from fairy-tale cute to charmless good tunes that are weighed down by overwrought production.

This collection of quirky tunes is largely directionless, with Gough's indistinct voice sounding lost and uncertain in a swell of pianos, strings and horn arrangements.

His pontification gets in the way of his songwriting.

What sounds great on paper feels like hollow tribute on closer inspection.

Shows the SoCal outfit mining the same bright pop-rock riffs that are being done better by the younger kids today.

The First Lady should be the last album on anyone's shopping list.

Too much of the disc is filtered through clinical and slightly jazzy rock that renders it a tiny noise about nothing.

Only the faux-reggae of "Jamaican Girl" lets some much needed light in between the blinds.

The album is so "been there, done that" that Twain often sounds like she's ripping herself off.