One By One, the latest album from the Foo Fighters, rocks. Problem is, that is about all it does.

Ikara Colt deliver their rock with a boastful swagger but still fail to generate too much excitement.

Hints at greatness, but never quite sustains it.

Slideling isn't a terrible album by any means. It just doesn't have a whole lot of depth to it.

He lets the technology overwhelm the proceedings and all too often it is used in service of forgettable, substandard melodies.

Unfortunately, the doom and gloom here wears out its welcome quickly.

Skimskitta's refusal or lack of ability to move beyond sketchy hisses and glitches makes for a too sprawling, too unfocused affair.

It's all too much like a fumbling Pink Floyd tribute, continually reaching a point where the psychedelica fails to follow up with the required kick, allowing the whole fragile structure to collapse into self-indulgence and bathetic kitsch.

The Datsuns' biggest problem isn't the style of music they're playing, though. It's the sub-standard quality of their songwriting, the uninspired performances on here and the fundamental lack of willingness to stretch beyond the safe confines of their older brothers' record collections.

If the listener is patient, and wades through over an hour of mediocrity, there is brightness at the end of the tunnel.

Human Conditions is the sound of Ashcroft searching for personal and spiritual connections and seeking higher truths in soaring pop choruses. All this existential meditation leaves us, like him, ultimately unfulfilled.

As a whole, Man Vs. Machine signifies a dialectic vacillation between lyrics and beats that are refreshingly intelligent, without being pretentious, and themes (manifested sonically and ideologically) that are recycled and uninspired.