Unfortunately Summers’s voice and persona just don’t suit this material.

It suffers from its uniformly dark tone and funereal tempos, and Ahearn’s attempts to sweeten things with an overly polished mix only makes a sad situation worse.

The band tries out big, fuzzy, folksy blues riffs on tracks like 'The Wanting Comes In Waves/Repaid and The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing,' but the proggy result is unmemorable and middling.

Nas isn't as passionate or well-informed about Africa's issues as he is about his own, a problem on an album that's supposed to be all about... Africa....Meanwhile, Marley dutifully toasts over the record's limp, rootsy production but really only wakes up for the harder beats, which are few and far between.

Its best moments reference the label’s penchant for breezy, languorous guitar lines, like on the catchy Weekenders. If only Minks would lay off the synth and embrace the guitar more often.

The album's dominant sound is dreary even by Wu standards: grey, bass-heavy beats for the eight living members' equally drab rhymes.

Morning Report finds Arkells lost and deep outside of their comfort zone.

As endearing as Jorge Garcia's face is, shining warmly from the cover of Weezer's eighth release, the timely pop reference to a Lost character is the perfect symbol for a band on a continued downward spiral into meme-based gimmickry and music with zero staying power.

She hits rock bottom on the repetitive, bland Daydreaming. It really does feel like a daydream, this whole idea of crowning a new female rap queen.

The amount of fatigue and cynicism baked into 14th album Innocence Reaches is not just a bummer; it's verging on ominous.

Whether anyone outside of the NPR listening audience actually gives a shit about what clever socio-political points Cooder is trying to make metaphorically is difficult to say.

Yoav’s whole shtick is that he only plays the acoustic guitar, but he runs it through a looping pedal to make drum and keyboard sounds. Conceptually, it’s an okay idea, and Yoav pulls it off, but it gets boring fast.

If this were purely an experimental electronic album, we'd overlook the lack of hooks, but even as such it's not particularly impressive.

Sadly, this is a posthumous offering that sounds half-finished and, considering they must have known this would be their final statement, like a missed opportunity.

CSS are so desperate to do something new that they never stick with their strengths.

Sonically, the first half of Unapologetic picks up on the syrupy Southern hip-hop minimalism popular last summer, while much of the latter half is a grab bag of unwieldy balladry.

First single Dope has that by way of Dr. Dre’s Deep Cover, but it fails to push the balance of the album beyond mediocrity.

Problem is, the odd hodge-podge of tracks have no apparent connection to each other and certainly don't make for a coherent statement or even a decent mixtape.

Petty’s classic pop knack, breezy melodies and laid-back drawl take a back seat to Campbell’s meandering, jammy solos and the album’s overwhelmingly old-guy-blues sound.

Lux sounds a lot like the kinds of slowly evolving patterns you can generate with those apps, but they come across as disappointingly ordinary when divorced from that participatory element.

He seems stuck between self-consciously chasing mainstream pop crossover and some underground ideal, and pulls off neither.

Blood struggles to shift out of platitude territory with lyrics fixated on horizons, stars and sunsets, and it soon becomes apparent that La Havas is content not to go much deeper than vague universalism requires.

[The album showcases] her technical precision as a singer but reluctance to colour outside the lines.

What makes Under The Blacklight a true disappointment is the shoddy songcraft.

The surprising question about the new recording by the RZA as alter ego Bobby Digital is not whether the outlandish masked get-ups, goofy comic strip scenarios and uninspired rhymes will undermine his credibility as the Wu Tang overlord, but whether he’s lost his production touch.

Their five-song EP produced by Dave Grohl and featuring covers of songs by ABBA, Depeche Mode, Roky Erickson and Army of Lovers is ridiculously lightweight.

It's a cool premise, but despite the ambition and guest musicians on each song, Sonic Highways sounds like every other Foo Fighters record.

4:13 Dream is slightly better than the misguided hype suggests.