The album suffers from the same primary problem that plagued the original S&M: Metallica’s best songs, intricate and ambitious though they may be, are not actually well suited for the additional orchestrating they get here, precisely because they are plenty symphonic already.

There are real, new stylistic portents here. But Josephine mostly suggests new directions rather than moving in them, and the traceless ache of its muddy middle-third ('Hope Dies Last,' 'The Handing Down,' 'Map of the Falling Sky') is burdensome.

These tried-and-true structures can seem fried-and-false.

The record grows soggy with Veirs' over-reliance on nautical themes.

Kittenz and Thee Glitz is Housecat watered down by trivia and outside egos.

While the record is far from a failure, Bishop Allen's studio revisionism also falls short of offering anything substantially new to much of the EP material.

Discover a Lovelier you isn't really even a bad album, only unremarkably OK.

The political lyrics are the most troublesome.

The sad fact is, no marketing strategy, no matter how savvy, could conceal this collection's bathetic, overwrought travesties and gruesome failures.

Gold comes off as clean, shiny, and over-the-top as Elliott Smith's XO, replete with strings, horns, and female backup singers. I double-checked the credits. Jon Brion wasn't listed.

Foals’ problem is that they have the same ambitions as just about every other large-font rock band these days and thus the same pitfalls. Making apolitical art feels borderline negligent, and yet it’s easier than ever to feel desensitized to the doomsaying when everything just seems to get incrementally worse.

The album is so densely packed that it’s easy to miss Marr’s overarching themes, a shame exacerbated by his habitual neglect to draw attention to his lyrics. A pleasantly flat, unassuming singer, he functions mostly as a conduit for his melodies, which is only a detriment on an album with so much potential thematic resonance.

The best ones spit in the face of death; this album instead finds aging men trying to reclaim their youth.

The story of a young female songwriter pushing back against the sexist songwriters on her major label and modern pop’s oppressive beauty standards is an impressive one. The cautious Sucker Punch could do with more of that insurrectionist spirit.

Too much of Going Grey seems oddly unwilling to risk offense--the concepts of “Far Drive,” “Everyone But You,” and “Grand Finale,” songs about various lovelorn states, could be the work of any pop-punker with a passing AP English grade, feeling as perfunctory and indistinct as the hyper-compressed, airless music surrounding them. Stella’s still got his tics, but by this point, they can feel like shtick.

Muhly has talent and an eager curiosity; the problem is, this inquisitive intelligence often finds more meaningful expression in his interviews (or on his gabby, regularly updated blog) than in his music.

Sculptor postures as a manifesto of independent thought, without saying anything specific or of substance.

Tremors is actually kinda intriguing in a “canary in the coalmine” sort of way.

Ryan Adams is a persuasively dark album, one defined by themes of struggle, instability, isolation, and regret.

Celebration, Florida doesn't simply reflect the hubbub of America as the Felice Brothers see it. The album becomes a part of the spectacle, which is surely not what the band intended.

At least half of The Blood Album’s songs feel virtually interchangeable and the other half sound like AFI wrote this stuff in the time it takes to play it.

It’s the pro-forma songwriting that transpires between those brontosaurus blasts that ultimately proves problematic. By using their muscular might to prop up otherwise featherweight tunes, Royal Blood have effectively built themselves a castle and furnished it with IKEA.

The bulk of Machine Says Yes draws heavily on the rhythms and studio techniques of FC Kahuna's big beat roots, and garnishes them vigorously with the robotic female vocals and canned electro beats of Ladytron or Peaches; it gets old faster than Wesley Willis.

To be fair, there is redemption embedded within, a few genuinely interesting bits wedged between stacks and stacks of gooey piano ballads.

There's nothing truly transgressive or illuminating or innovative about Last of the Country Gentlemen.

Where even her most divisive albums have managed to push her artistic boundaries, Volta feels limp and strangely empty-- almost unfinished.

Unlike other Bowie live albums, this doesn’t document a specific tour or phase. It’s just a quiet, pleasant footnote to a busy era.

Instead of exploring their sound and growing more dexterous over time, Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter have backed themselves into a creative corner on Marble Son--with a sound so austere it becomes tedious instead of heady, tentative instead of revelatory.