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

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

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

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

The seventh LP by these Hot Topic/Warped tour faves sees the onetime mainstream screamo success story trying really hard to acclimate itself with whatever constitutes the present mainsteam-music climate. [No. 149, p.61]

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

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]

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]

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

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

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]

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

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

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

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

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

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]

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

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

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]

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]

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]

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

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

Forget Evil Urges entirely; call this one Zzz.

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

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

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