Fail[s] to constantly engage the listener.

For every hit, there exists a miss.

The Collective's aspirations come off as bland and blurry, as if aspiration alone was the sole goal for this jam, spread out over three quarters of an hour.

Familiarity can be a good thing, but The Stands get plain fresh, crossing the line between feeling safe and feeling violated.

That Fasciinatiion isn't a revelatory departure is not to say that it is completely without merit. It is, however, undeniably lacking an air of excitement.

Despite its faults, Morning Tide will no doubt satisfy fans of crafty pop and have them dancing and singing.

Most of these tracks can be found on the Internet in their original Iron & Wine incarnations, and all but one sounds 100% better that way.

There is a feeling of being sucked into a mid-90s vortex here.

Everything goes smoothly on In the Clear, with no real highs or lows, so to speak, and as such it unrolls without much fanfare or energy.

With a Cape and a Cane feels more like it was made by a band of salty old musicians hoping to revive a past success instead of a sophomore album.

Once through, we realize Ideal Lives does not feel unified, which is exactly what makes it so interesting but also so difficult to fully embrace.

Dangerous Dreams is a passable album that never achieves greatness, nor does it fail miserably, rather residing with the mundane.

For some reason, the band seemed to strip things down on this album, as the tracks are less sophisticated and experimental than on previous works, (which is fine for most bands, but for ones that aspire to keep their crown at the forefront of indie-pop, just not going to cut it).

Decent and decadent, Good Apollo is still ultimately the least of the band’s 3 full lengths. It continues the band’s tradition for experimentation, with melodies breaking through the chaos but it is less successful and equally disappointing with no new tricks.

Some songs are worth a listen, but the overall package sounds and feels redundant and, putting myself at the mercy of =W= fans everywhere, renders itself irrelevant.

We know in their perfect pop moments, Fountains of Wayne can be inspiring, but Out-of-State Plates proves that in imperfection, they can wear even the most admiring fans out.

Even the songs that rise above the simple looped-beat formula don’t have much to offer.

For devote metal heads, Early Man may represent a renaissance of the original, pure metal sound that started it all. For everyone else, Closing In will be received as a retro novelty rather than a serious musical accomplishment.

Skipping over a few songs, such as "When Butterflies Leave" and "Whispers From A Spiritual Garden" — because who wants to hear spiritual babbling when Islam can sing so diatonically correct — the album flourishes into a masterpiece of sincerity to its core.

The problem is simply that Gang of Four got Entertainment! right the first time, whether they like it or not.

The Secret Migration has the power to cast a spell over you with its dreamy, wraithlike keyboards. Many won't fall for it, though, and will undoubtedly find them too melodramatic.

Ultimately at this point, the songs that I'm most attracted to are still the slower, more intuitive weepers showcasing Vedder's voice, and alas, such simplicity is scarce on Backspacer.

Cash grab? Perhaps. Phoning it in? Maybe. Or maybe it’s their attempt to open up to a new crowd - but whatever it is it’s better left as an experiment.

They can't be accused of not making spirited music, but Northern State are still looking for the right words to express their sensible worldview.

Earlier pieces that amused or excited the listener have given way to more approachable sounds constantly on the verge of blending in completely. While seldom bad and almost wholly listenable, Vapours proves to be a bland disappointment from a group of usually creative musicians.

At times the running-on-fumes punk benefits The Monitor's overall sound. But the problem is that the songs that surround the defined centerpieces sound undeveloped or just plain fall flat, particularly early on when we hear about a supposed hero covered in excrement and piss as a dramatic plot-point.

Once Upon A Time is simply derivative, a rehash of the band itself.

Where Cale flaps up is in not allowing himself enough space for nuance atop his overdriven guitars, forcing the deployment of gaudy keyboard settings to match the guitars’ "intensity" and even fumbling into a bona fide mall-punk chorus in "Perfect."

Hill’s disc captures everything that’s easy to hate about Hella.... Seim’s album, on the other hand, is easily the most fully-realized work to bear the Hella name.

Shut Up’s biggest downfall is it’s speed, or lack thereof. The songs lilt and twirl with Krug’s yelp, xylophones and processed guitars, but rarely does the pace exceed ballad-like levels.

Nightcrawler is essentially a sequence of fourteen overproduced songs that bleed into one another. Mind you these are not bad songs... But there is an overwhelming feeling that he is merely going through the motions.

Too familiar, too gloomy and too bland.

Even at its best this whole record sounds like a band who wants to make an impact by trying to be everything to everyone. And because they're not too good at everything they do yet, this lack of a definitive identity that makes it difficult to take them seriously (or if this is their definitive identity, they're just boring).

A handful of these recordings show promise, and should prove enjoyable for diehards and newcomers alike.... These standouts sadly don’t compensate for the rest of the album’s general blandness.

Although they do show some potential, the Capitol Years do not rightfully deserve the hype they are getting.

As it is now, decidedly un-personal, In Our Nature falls flat.

Overly polished and far too artificial.

To simply not want to skip tracks isn't exactly saying anything, and certainly not that Wilco has made any kind of return to relevance. But Jeff the person is doing just fine, and instead of chastising this release, let's be happy that the guy who gave us more serious, occasionally harrowing masterpieces such as Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot finally seems to be having some fun. Next time it'd be nice if he let us in on it.

Happiness Ltd. is a big mess.

The icy joylessness with which Bulmer humors her band's recordings doesn't ruin everything, shockingly enough.

In the end Continuum feels like little-more than the self-indulgent effort of a possibly-peaked pop star.

It’s too bad more songs don’t skip the sophomoric lyrics. Tinker around with your equalizer - you may be able to drown out the vocals and save the otherwise interesting CD.

A Colores’s most glaring failure is its reluctance to shift from the narcotic tone it so quickly assumes.

Casting off songs entirely for 17 parts that to their cult make a sum, I was sure this would be the one where I could finally take my other foot off the doorstop....[But] the fresh voices and staged character interplay keep Meloy's pretensions from boiling over, and loathe as I am to admit, two of the four title tracks culminate in something like hooks.

Decidedly unremarkable.

Despite the variety of acts on the disc, the songs are surprisingly uniform in structure: stripped down to Beck's vocals (which are left intact) and rebuilt with a drum machine set to either "monotonous" or "uninspired."

The one unique thing about Stewart's lyrical style (a sort of homage of shallow, U.S. suburban vernacular that paints a very specific picture to those of us from the suburbs) seems to be missing on Dear God, I Hate Myself. Sure, maybe it's even tongue-in-cheek, but I sure hope he's not joking.

It falls flat, offering little hope for the listener; after a few disappointing rounds of thinking that the next track simply HAS to be solid, the album exits as if it were never really there. Without a doubt, War Stories is the weakest and most disappointing UNKLE release to date.

For 80s nostalgia freaks, you might find that We Are Scientists have a few things in common with The Cure, and you might find that charming. But that’ll tide you over only so long before you realize this is nothing more than a major label trying to play catch-up by signing somebody who sounds like the flavor-of-the-month.

Numbers tout themselves as a dance-punk outfit, but they won’t get you on the dance floor anytime soon.

Nine of Arm's Way's twelve songs start with legs, but ultimately suffer from an inability to respect their limits.

The prevailing lack of substance declares itself by the time "Still Take You Home" kicks in, and it becomes evident that Alex Turner’s somewhat chirpy vocals are the album’s lone cohesive influence.

Rollie has yet to find his voice, though.

While Chrome Dreams II was clearly modeled after his more "classic" sounding work, it finds Young sounding like little more than a knockoff of his former self.

Some of the tracks may be fun, but The Best Little Secrets Are Kept is little more than mindlessness parading as innovation.

The third time is not the charm, at least in the case of this album, which is polished to the point of being ultimately less appealing and without any angles from which to approach.

From the first song to the last, Speakers And Tweeters is an audio trip back in time, but not in the poignant sentimental way that one might hope.

X & Y is uninspired adult pop that drops jaws only in its capacity to elicit yawns.

Body of Song truly falters in its inability to successfully blend two sensibilities.

The band is learning to play their instruments better, but they’ve lost some aggression, which was the key to the little charm they had from the get-go.