The message may project the present-day feeling of hopelessness and conspiracy, but as the medium is soulless, effortless and tinkers along with less musical substance than when a bunch of 13-year-olds get together to form their first garage band, it's the listener who'll feel mocked, cheated and wanting to escape. [No. 149, p.55]

Continue to blame "hipsters" for cultural ruination but can't find any to shame because they stopped wearing white belts a long time ago. [No. 148, p.53]

It's difficult to imagine even a hardcore completist wanting to hear Chilton's interminable orgasmic noises on the title track, long stretches of drunken studio banter or yet another two versions of Third's "Jesus Christ." [No. 144, p.53]

The vocals are on point in Ashcroft's non-plussed yet quintessentially pop-edged delivery, but these arrangements lean more toward boredom and self-servitude. [No. 133, p.53]

Krug's mushy, mixed-down vocals and the lack of dynamic range often sucks all the life out of the music. [No. 132, p.57]

Weezer, the 10th album by Weezer, is about as good (or bad, your call) as Weezer, several measures worse than Weezer, and a once-you-hear-it, you'll-never-unhear-it skid mark on the shorts of Weezer. [No. 130, p.51]

It's unlistenable dreck. [No. 126, p.55]

Paper Gods is an exercise in shamelessly rehashing every tired, vaguely transgressive cliche that's defined Duran Duran's 30-plus-year career. [No. 124, p.55]

Hideously tedious sounds of the "definitive" Primus lineup drowning in a soupy melange of chocolate and cutesy pretense gone way, way wrong. [No. 114, p.61]

What Is This Heart? certainly isn't done any favors by Krell's stock, dejection-by-the-numbers lyricism and the baring of his overextended falsetto against the array of muted synths, strings and drum machines that crop up from song to song, as the album cycles through every tired adult-contemporary R&B trope in the book. [No. 111, p.55]

There are seeds of talent in Phox, but this album doesn't let the band flourish. [No. 111, p.59]

Rod and Gab's fifth album is bereft of personality. [No. 110, p.59]

It's the sort of record today's 15-year-olds are going to feel embarrassed about owning five or six years from now. [No. 108, p.56]

Their latest is another reliably pleasant, if inconsequential offering. [No. 106, p.52]

[A] joyless, meticulously crafted trudge. [No. 106, p.52]

Stale, vapid and generally awful. [No. 105, p.55]

Despite valiant efforts at punking up "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and "White Christmas," this is starting to sound like a bad joke. [No. 105, p.52]

This time it's insipid, acousti-stomp faux-psych of the down-to-mid-tempo variety, and autopilot riffers that come off like MADtv skits about stoner metal. [No. 104, p.59]

Mediocrity this aggressive should cancel itself out at some point. [No. 101, p.53]

Queens Of The Stone Age lumbers its way through a series of increasingly skronky, sludge-by-numbers jams and sound. [No. 100, p.57]

The failing of Plain, however, is its lack of direction and absence of cohesiveness. [No. 98, p.55]

Not only does Bankrupt! propose a big, stadium-ready sound, it offers one that nearly suffocates its creators. [No. 98, p.59]

Take the fake phone call and run, don't elephant walk, away. [No. 98, p.56]

A poor pastiche of Aphex Twin, Spandau Ballet and Gary Numan. [No. 96, p.60]

Phillip Ekstrom's vocals echo the tortured moan of Robert Smith with a trace of Ian McCulloch's attitude, but he never manages to find his own voice. Except for the implied reggae pulse on "Blues," neither does the band. [No. 96, p.56]

After all these years, the band still possesses no originality or musical inventiveness that could distinguish it from the pack. [No. 93, p.58]

The whole record is all skittering drums never finding their place, and shivering synths that drift in search of a landing pad. [No. 94, p.58]

Unfortunately all this hi-watt talent [guest vocalists] can't cover up Iha's weak vocals, which pass from winsome to wan early on and never recover. [No.92 p.54]

Occasional exotic loop or surprising flair aside, the rest [aside from three songs] is listenable, charmless and pointless. [No.90, p.58]

This wet blanket is a sheer bore. [No.89, p.57]

Seems shambled and unfinished. [No. 85, p.58]

It's fine that none of this is the least bit subtle. Memorable, or anything other than baseline catchy, is another thing entirely. [#81, p. 56]

Mercury Rev has talked about reinvention and veering away from its comfort zone, which is only to be commended, but the band has really fallen flat on its face here.

Brightblack Morning Light has always been a druggie band; this time, however, the drug of choice is Dramamine.

Forget Evil Urges entirely; call this one Zzz.

Aside from a handful of tunes, little here is all that memorable, namely because the hooks can’t see their way clear of the repetitive, robotic arrangements.

Strength In Numbers makes you wonder if you ever really liked this band at all. [#75, p.94]

What had been a fascinating display of aural minimalism has morphed into a haphazard, ill-advised mess. [#75, p.96]

The truth is, even Angels & Airwaves do this sort of epic-emo thing with more verve, if not more Verve. [#73, p.96]

How in god's name did Damon Gough fall so far? [#74, p.90]

Where 2005's harrowing Frances The Mute strikes the right balance between inspiration and indulgence, the Mars Volta loses its equilibrium with Amputechture. [#73, p.96]

There are but three words to describe the sixth album from [Nightmares On Wax]... "repetition"... "derivative"... "listless."[#71, p.108]

On Rehearsing My Choir, the Furnaces are just defiant because they can be, indulging every impulse but neglecting to make any of them even remotely compelling. [#70, p.96]

A dull collection of dreary drone-rock songs. [#69, p.111]

Suggests some arcane Canuck payment scheme in which lyricists are compensated by the syllable. [#70, p.106]

Only a couple of tracks on Nightbird flicker with any sparks of life. [#67, p.96]

Feels like a product of the past. Not the distant past, either, where at least its retrofits could be forgiven as homage. Lemon Jelly captures electronica circa 1993. [#67, p.102]

Doesn't offer much in the way of anything appealing. [#67, p.90]

By stripping away the symphonic, avant edge... [Gomez] loses much of what made it unique in the first place. [#64, p.96]

Tepid, predictable.... It's sleek and stylized, the spastic, jittery punk replaced by impassioned, searching guitar lines. [#60, p.110]

Oh, big breathy bombast, they name is Sense Field. [#60, p.113]

Sounds like musicians so thoroughly bereft of ideas and energy that they've resorted to lifting melodies from their record collections wholesale while crossing their fingers for luck, hoping no one will notice the difference between inspiration and theft. [#59, p.88]

This batch of 11 half-baked songs is whiny, lifeless and not even close to stimulating. [#60, p.106]

Not even Linkous can prop up this house of cards for long. [#58, p.94]

He sandbags every song with gigantic, syrupy string arrangements that make John Williams sound like John Cage. [#58, p.82]

Give Up is a record that says, well, nothing. [#58, p.100]

The unintentionally hilarious Mount Eerie misfires so dramatically, it makes you want to reconsider not the Second Amendment but the First. [#57, p.98]

Turgid at best. [#57, p.102]

Easy listening has never been this painful. [#57, p.106]

Shallow and superficial. [#56, p.101]

Here, on one compact disc, is what's wrong with the music industry. [#54, p.110]

In spite of its shortcomings, there's something fascinating about this saccharine new Butthole brew.... Like driving by a head-on collision late at night, it's almost impossible to avert your eyes. [#51, p.88]

I don't know which Stereolab album is more nauseating: Sound-Dust or the last one. [#51, p.118]

Wow, is Beyond Good And Evil bad. Thudding, empty albums about nothing, held together with some of the worst guitar solos since late-'80s Lou Reed. [#51, p.90]

While in his mind, Momus might indeed be a giant, to those of us growing weary of his increasingly tedious shtick, he just might be a weenie. [#50, p.99]

Tortoise makes like Herbie Hancock wandering through the '80s, all lost at the jazz-fusion supermarket. [#49, p.95]

Dog is Black's safest record in years.... As such, however, the album is a bore. Rollicking American rock and pedal-stell ballads don't suit Black, and the resulting arrangements are both unsurprising and uninspired. [#48, p.78]

Musically, the quartet is borderline worthless. [#48, p.84]

Halfway applies Cook's fading trademark of playful repetition to similarly crackly sampling and comes up almost wholly unlikable. [#48, p.89]