In lieu of artistry or any semblance of lyrical spark, DST offers monotonous production and relentless chanting.

Unfortunately, all the intricately picked little guitar figures don't make his raspy yelping sound any less like a wet cat stuck under a couch.

The Audience's Listening is kinda like a Fatboy Slim B-sides collection circa 1998 without the catchy bits.

He rushes through the tunes, slurring syllables as if enunciating the lyrics would be too much work even if he could remember all of them. And clearly, one day wasn’t enough rehearsal time for his hired band, who are so often in vamp mode while trying to figure out where Morrison’s going that they lose track of the tunes.

A dreary dump of sad sack pop blather that makes poor use of the substantial talent on hand.

Boring grooves that last a couple of minutes before ending abruptly just don’t cut it. What a letdown.

The boring beats and throwback rhyme flow (circa 92)--which is weak even by Edmontonian standards--put Afterparty Babies somewhere beneath Don Cash’s home demos and the outtakes from Organized Rhyme’s Huh? Stiffenin’ Against The Wall.

Uniformly mediocre.... It leads one to assume he's either lost the ability to discern the padding from the profound or he just didn't give a shit.

The problems that litter No Line fall into two categories: mind-numbing blandness on the part of the band or embarrassing, face-palm-inducing vocal choices by Bono.

Unfortunately, Furtado doesn't have the rhyming skills, vocal chops or attitude to pull off any one of her new personae.

Instead of moving forward with a bold new sound, they seem lost and confused, eventually reverting to the sprawling space rock jams of their early years, which may be their comfort zone.

There seems to be something unsettlingly artifical about the whole Beirut project, as if idea man Zach Condon is playing some strange cultural appropriation game for which he’s the only one privy to the rules.

Songs you'd expect to swell and boil over--which is what Modest Mouse are good at--often end up trudging humourlessly (Ansel, Be Brave), and things get far worse in the moments where humour is actually the goal.

Topping off this overproduced, underwhelming effort are Roberts's over-enunciated lyrics. Even at his best, he comes off like a guy crashing an Of Montreal album.

A combination of insipid songs and uniformly soulless performances, it deserves high placement among the other legendary Macca misfires Pipes Of Peace, Press To Play, Off The Ground, Tug Of War and Red Rose Speedway.

Rather than the thoughtful songcraft and inspired peformances of Banhart's pre-Roberts Young God recordings, what you hear now is the zoned-out noodling of someone who foolishly believes his own genius hype.

Two-thirds of the songs fail to cohere.

It all adds up to a whole that’s somehow less than the sum of its parts.

While a hip-hop album that’s not a complete kielbasa festival is refreshing, Luda’s feminist intentions are horribly misguided.

The novelty of it all has quickly worn thin.

Jay proves that, yes, he really has nothing more to say except to state the fact that he's back.

Despite their brevity, the songs are repetitive, wanky and almost impossible to differentiate. They make you yearn for the days before genre cross-pollination.

They’ve set their laser harp on “snooze” and come up with a yawn-inspiring set of digital whoosh over which to chant some nonsense that at best resembles the Chemical Brothers at their worst.

Without any clever arrangements or production gimmicks to rely on, Keys tries to compensate for the obvious shortcomings by oversinging each syllable in a way that would make Patti LaBelle cringe.

Redundant, needlessly long, Those The Brokes rarely matches the 60s California-dreamin' good-vibes pop of its successful self-titled predecessor.

Unbearably bland.

Sadly, this landfill isn't biodegradable.

The most listenable song is the Chavril duet Let Me Go, which has zero of either musician’s “edge” and a whole lot of adult contemporary schmaltz.