Toning down the sonic drama creates an appealing intimacy, but an hour's worth of blues- and folk-flavored ballads becomes monotonous.

However well-crafted and hummable it is, Exhibitionists is hardly groundbreaking. Each song feels borrowed rather than handmade.

That spitfire spirit carries over into the most electrifying moments of Just Like You, a batch of tuff-girl tunes for the torn-fishnets set, but too much of it sounds impermanent, like so much Manic Panic rinsing down the drain.

A sense that his musical vision hasn't stalled in 1978 might add some urgency. Some kind of retooling might also help with his larger problem: trying to do the same job with old equipment. [11 Sep 2006]

The album should keep him atop the country commercial firmament, but doesn't really advance him as an artist.

Once you get past the surface attractions, Sam Endicott's arch singing and rock-rebel posturing are forced, and his production is as stiff as the mechanical discoid rhythms. [24 Apr 2005]

Nearly every song overstays its welcome; what may have felt like a bunch of great jams in the studio grows tedious over the course of 12 tracks.

As meticulously as these sounds and instruments are recorded, as beautiful and haunting as they sometimes sound, they don't add up to more than one or two truly memorable songs.

Chesney's tone-deafness here seems especially egregious because it's surrounded by better, smarter material.

It's all very fun and creative, but, ironically, the duo fall into the common hip-hop traps of being short on actual hooks and not knowing when to edit themselves. [15 Dec 2004]

It may not be fair to rag on the group for picking the wrong decade to rip off, but right now Kasabian's allegiance to the '90s sounds especially uninspired.

All that star power can leave little room in these futuristic R&B songs for Hilson, whose sturdy but unremarkable voice rarely transcends its role as a melody-delivery device.

On Made in the A.M. the group takes advantage of its nothing-to-lose position with a handful of cuts that feel even loosey-goosier than usual.

One just wishes the band did it with a bit more grace and inventiveness than on Appeal to Reason, where straight-outta-the Nation song titles like 'Collapse (Post-Amerika)' and 'Re-education (Through Labor)' disguise some pretty conservative ideas about how modern mainstream punk should sound.

She's sounding as genre-bound in her way as the synthetic singers she was supposed to be a relief from.

At 16 tracks, though, Fifty Shades of Grey is a bit of a slog, with too many dreary midtempo numbers--by Sia, Laura Welsh and Skylar Grey--that only feel more glazed (and less enticing) the longer you listen.

If only the others brought aboard were extended as much freedom to do something other than trace outlines over the contours of this familiar canon.

It’s a disappointingly ordinary effort that for the most part merely does what modern Nashville product is supposed to do.

It’s an unpredictable mix of sharp, artful commentary, wildly creative song making and, despite the album’s title, plenty of aimless, indulgent meandering.

Don't expect a record as breathtaking as U2 at its best. Rather, this is average-grade stuff with a couple essential songs.

But extracting a narrative from these delicate sounds can feel like more trouble than they're worth--even if you haven't half as much happening as Albarn does.

E=MC2 is a little better--the songwriting is more consistent, the feel a bit more natural--but it too lacks a ruling temperament or artistic vision.

The cartoonish sound compensates for Spears' lack of range and lung power by allowing her to ham it up.

The album offers evidence that the singer has fallen behind, that she is no longer setting the conversation in a genre she essentially invented - blending Top 40 pop with club music.

It surrounds a handful of his sharpest, most insightful songs with far less effective material--tracks that either vague out into club-rap utility or sag hopelessly under the weight of cornball sentiment.

For all the innuendo and introspection, Talk That Talk contains little sweat, slobber or fluids and a lot of plasticized, inflatable insinuation.

Her sadly depleted voice is again propped up by multi-tracking, and the occasional dog-deafening shriek hardly proves she's recaptured her early acrobatic power. [10 Apr 2005]

While the depressive stuff is unsurprisingly disturbing--“I Thought About Killing You,” which opens Ye, evokes a school shooter’s nightmarish manifesto--West’s moments of euphoria prove no less vexing. ... This hymn-like ballad ["Violent Crimes"] built on churchy keyboards is so exquisitely rendered that, like much of Ye, it threatens to bring you over to his point of view.