Mostly everything is contrived and cliché, lifted from a stock collection of guitar rock and electro rock of the past ten years.

This album does its best to give certain fans exactly what they want in sexually-driven club grinders while offering up real, honest-to-goodness substance. It isn't always a perfect situation, and parts of the album border on forgettable, but when they get it right, everything's groovy.

The first two tracks (two of the three singles from the album) are irritatingly underwhelming, and only Carrion (the third of the aforementioned singles) conveys any of the urgency and compactness required to really grab a listeners' attention.

Vices & Virtues bucks that somewhat healthy trend in entirely the wrong manner, and represents exactly the kind of the uninspired drudgery of Americana indie rock that has emerged in the wake of the likes of My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy.

It quickly veers into a curious stream of whim with their most alienating, and unfortunately, their most characterless yet--they deliver an onslaught of acrimonious synths in the post-apocalyptic, jazz-tinged Mystery Disease, while Cool Song No. 2 shamelessly takes a page out of the Can playbook with its grimy, overcompressed effects.

This is an album of average to good songs, with only a few highlights.

The girls are solid musicians, and they’ve structured their little songs well enough. The record is pretty short too, clocking in at 24 minutes, which is good, because I was bored already at the 15 minute mark.

Some people might Matt & Kim's music is without substance, totally incapable of being a sustainable addition to the sonic landscape. I submit that their saccharine hooks, covered in a coating of post-adolescent confusion, is just the opposite.

There are two great tracks here, three solid ones, and five complete duds.

To be fair, if it weren't for Lynch's lacklustre vocals and lyrics there might be a fairly solid collection of atmospheric retro rock 'n' roll here, but as it seems to be coming at the expense of his film career that's still not quite good enough.

It all sounds very immaturely polished.

It's not up there with their very best, but it's actually not that far off.

Save for a few tracks, you get exactly what you'd expect from a band like Dead Confederate: middle of the road alternative rock music with seemingly little depth and a whole lot of cliches.

For many reasons it is confused, self-absorbed, remarkably gauche. It is so often an intentionally uncomfortable thing to listen to... [yet] intriguing.

There is a laudably uncompromising quality to the album which I admire. But by the time I get to album finale Brunswick Sludge I find myself getting a little bored with it all. There's only so much wacky noise experimentation I can take in one go.

Frontman Max Bloom’s voice isn’t even that dissimilar from that of the man he replaced in 2013, but he’s lacking something that Blumberg clearly had in his arsenal to sharpen his band’s sound.

Shadow's production is wantonly flashy, but it can't mask his lack of flair.

Too Much Information sounds more like a collection of tracks from different moments in their career than a fully cohesive whole but perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing.

While not everything here is awful, the good is often streaked throughout each song like marbled fat in a rubber steak.

It doesn’t leave much to the imagination; in fact, it states quite clear that there’s not much substance behind their muscular, other times grounded, modern rock template.

Call it voyeur. Call it artificial. Call it exploitative. Just don’t call it boring. It’s the first 50 Cent album in some time that can boast that.

There are some truly great moments here where the band crash around making glorious, daft, noisy pop music, but they stand at a stark counterpoint with the cloying experimental tendencies Barnes forces through.

Tomorrow's World isn't a bad album but it's not a complete "return to form" either.

Over the course of this slightly bloated track listing there is too much focus on the soft rock element of her sound and this which works to the detriment of her fascinating lyrics and bewitching theatrics.

Most significant is how amazingly catchy the album is. Sure, it might be a bit vacuous lyrically, but Dent May sure can write hooks.

The Other Side of Zero shifts from side to side with some regularity, ranging from bubbly and invigorating to downbeat and expressive. There's a real sense of diversity here, and it's what sets the album apart.

The downside is that both members of Team Beamwell are retreading well-worn paths that lead to nostalgic, rather than newfound, destinations.

The music saves this album from certain disaster--an idea that, at its root is perplexing at best, is executed in an even more clumsy and confusing way.