At best, the songs on their ninth album are bland recreations of their past successes.

So there’s no shortage of sick beats, but Common’s decision to dumb down his rhymes to a rude and rudimentary level comes off horribly crass at best and at worst downright embarrassing.

The songs are not so much about love as the memory of love and, accordingly, there's a chasm between her aggressive vocal runs and the cautiously generalist lyrics, especially on the maudlin latter half.

Hungry Bird is tired, unvaried and dull, possibly because the band’s dissolved and reformed many times since 1991, with singer/songwriter/guitarist Eef Barzelay the only constant.

He doesn't sound convincingly comfortable in this power-ballad terrain that once worked so well for him in Temple Of The Dog.

Melt doesn't sound fractured because of a glut of geographical references but because of its pieced-together nature.

Going for immediate and real, Young ends up with a disc that resembles a tentative early demo for what could have been a decent (albeit strange) Crazy Horse album.

He’s crafted yet another replica batch of breezy, walk-along-the-beach jams [which] won’t matter to his fans, who keep coming back to their sandal-footed prophet regardless.

The most frustrating part is that many of the songs are decent, but they're consistently compromised by the ham-fisted presentation.

The pitch-correction software is alive and well even on this record.... This glaring inconsistency is the least of BP3’s missteps.

As with similar high-concept projects, most of it doesn't work, and the most successful pairings are often the ones you'd least expect.

Concocting a ruse about how the album came about after discovering a cardboard box of dusty and undated reel-to-reel tapes of the BPA’s lost studio sessions from the 70s seems foolish and unnecessary if the recordings were good enough to stand on their own merit. Sadly, other than Iggy Pop’s crack at the Monochrome Set tune He’s Frank, they’re not.

If this weren’t such a disingenuous, cynical and generally creepy record, it would be something I could really get behind.

It’s not a complete washout; there are indeed some promising moments. Unfortunately, none of them get developed enough to compensate for the bland­ness of the rest of the album.

Three albums and 700 guitar solos later, they sound like a band becoming a bit too comfortable in their niche.

The bigger problem, though, is Young Buck's yawn-inducing rhyme flow, which, paired with relentlessly slow, chugging beats, creates pure aural Sominex.

Replacement guitarist Luke Paquin is serviceable but stays in the shadows, while vocalist Steve Bays sheds more of HHH's former skin on a sonically big record that offers only rare doses of the pulsating new wave punk energy they once emitted.

TPC keep their songs taut and mostly under three minutes, so Elephant Shell whips by in a charging whirl of indie rock urgency but skips on substance.

The whole album lacks focus. Williams jumps around from big band to Pet Shop Boys electro to piano ballads to easy rocking. The one common thread is overproduction.

While her straightforward songwriting certainly comes across as honest, it can feel a little hokey.

Vetiver’s 2006 To Find Me Gone found that nice place for campfire listening, but tracks like Everyday and More Of This sound more like background tunes released for the purpose of selling a digital camera or a cellphone with really good reception.

Despite Keys's proficiency (she co-wrote Where's The Fun In Forever, one of the best songs on Miguel's new album), she's always seemed a little boring. On that front, she delivers.

Maybe the label was hoping to get back some of the Goo Goos' 90s magic, but that doesn't happen.

NAV’s songcraft is sharp, but the lack of dynamics ultimately makes this debut feel one-note.

Choosing to record only songs by women is an intriguing twist. It might actually have made for a great comeback album if Moorer had dug a little deeper for more appropriate material.

The biggest problem is Morrissey himself, who sounds like he’s trying to be clever rather than actually demonstrating that infamously razor-sharp wit.

The album doesn’t sound phoned in, necessarily, but it absolutely sounds vacuous, vapid and clichéd.

Despite exceptionally strong hooks and her fine, assured singing, it's hard not to feel frustrated by Consentino's lack of depth and constant use of the most obvious rhymes.