No matter how glossy the production, it’s impossible not to notice that Simpson can’t sing well enough to carry an album, while her peppy, Avril-lite personality comes off as contrived and as obnoxious as Lavigne’s.

The central dichotomous tension is blandly predictable (loud-quiet-loud-quiet), the songwriting occasionally sharp, but its political themes--like its vocalist--are lost in the fury.

The results turn out to be lifeless instead of uplifting and accessible as they'd hoped.

Allan has a powerful voice, but it goes to waste under drowning synths and self-indulgent production by U2's Flood, who seems determined to drain the pop element out the band and turn them into a narcissistic mess.

The record's best moments aim low rather than loud, with spacious, skittery beats that let loose Rihanna's Caribbean cadence.

Ronson lowers Ricky Wilson’s maddeningly limited vocals and amps the bass, but the disc still fails to come alive.

Black Ice may sound like a vintage AC/DC record in a superficial way, thanks to producer Brendan O’Brien and engineer Mike Fraser, but having Brian Johnson squeal dumb cliché phrases--three of the 15 songs have “rock ’n’ roll” in the title while a fourth has “rocking”--over a steady 4/4 thump is going to bore even their most ardent followers.

For the most part the record is a sluggish mess of sweeping guitars and stoner-rock sounds, not unlike what you might hear at a high school talent show.

Even as they cop the slinky white funk of INXS and David Bowie on Love Me and aim for an easily romanced demographic with the electro-tinged ballad A Change Of Heart and the anguished The Ballad Of Me And My Brain, they sound suspiciously like dudes too eager to come off as sensitive and edgy.

Woomble... shows an innate inability to keep pace, vocally and emotionally, with the thrusting guitars, driving drums and push toward intensity the band bids for.

It relies heavily on ambiguous world music tropes, highly melodic, canned inspirational hooks and arena-style arranging.

The ukulele, while a beautiful, serene instrument, is arguably limited, especially as the centrepiece of an album this long. Vedder's distinct baritone complements it, but his chords eventually become repetitive.

The Weirdness does have many of the recognizable sonic and structural traits, but the essential threat of impending doom is missing.

Sure, the beats bang like crazy, but the songs are emotionally hollow, thematically one-dimen­sional and conceptually lifeless.

For everybody else, an album of atmospheric repetitions and meandering jams likely won’t be overly exciting.

The album starts strong with classic Kylie banger Into The Blue, but it suddenly succumbs to faddishness on nondescript disco tune Sexy Love and the weirdly dated dubstep track Sexercize.

If only Steele could keep a lineup together for more than a few months and follow through with his original plan of working with producer Dave Fridmann, Personality might've risen above the level of ho-hum patchwork pastiche.

The outlandish baroque-cubed excess here, from the warbling chorales to the bleating woodwinds, weighs down track after track after track after track.

Now, her newest batch of songs feel overly done up and superficial, with squeaky synths and drum machine beats fabricated for the club.

Protest the Hero have never been short on energy, but their fourth album lacks variety and rarely allows the listener to breathe.

Nothing terribly new or unexpected to report, just a more direct way of expressing not so adventurous ideas.

Rearrange Beds, the duo’s debut full-length, features the five EP tunes plus another five that aren’t as strong. While not bad in small doses, the disc has a cumulative grating effect if you listen from start to finish.

The album revels in the clean, streamlined production elements and beautifully realized nocturnal atmosphere favoured by the OVO camp, but that sonic branding, if you will, swallows up any sort of personal flavour or perspective that might set Majid Jordan apart.

Cutesy lyrics with insipid rhymes like "You can count on me like one, two, three" abound on songs that play out less like a cohesive album and more like no-brainer radio references to Coldplay, U2, Michael Jackson, Sade, Feist and so on.

That said, there are plenty of catchy moments. Beat-wise, Boots & Boys--a song about what brings her joy--is incredibly well constructed. If only the insipid lyrics were left off completely.

The bigger problem is an overall lack of energy; there are only so many mid-tempo middle-of-the-road psych-pop songs you can listen to before starting to watch the clock.

Light, breezy and somewhat snoozy, Christopher has some pleasant moments, but it's not the strongest work in McPhun's discography.

There are moments here, but ultimately Streetlights pales against BlaQKout, the Kurupt/DJ Quik collaboration that dropped last year.