For the most part, I Com sounds like the worst musical mangles of electroclash: the ax-chipped rhythms, the dated blips and bleeps, the distinct sheen of thoughtlessness, and the wry style shot like a flare over the head of substance.

In spite of its title, Carlos and company don't really do a lot of shape-shifting on this roundly insipid record. It's depressing that Santana, an artist who is so clearly capable of creating frenetic, passionate - sexy even - music, has produced something so soullessly inert.

Everyone plays it safe, no one takes a risk, and the end result is the most forgettable pop album to be released so far this year.

Besides these somewhat untraditional, lackluster guest spots--odd that the one thing that used to hold Lavelle above water is now the most notable problem--is the fact that End Titles...Stories for Film has absolutely no flow to it, something Lavelle more or less acknowledges in the liner notes.

Long-running bands that maintain success--a rarity in itself--do so by varying their sound and by exploring new ideas, by maturing with their audience. Boxes is a sloppy attempt to follow that charted path.

The music sounds less and less related to Cunniff’s roots, more and more similar to a slew of interchangeable soft-pop songs, of the type you’re likely to hear in a doctor’s office or a grocery store.

Unexceptional leads and dyspeptic detours mar the disappointing Orbits.

For a band once so captivating and mysterious, Smoke Fairies is a colossal step back.

The idiosyncratic intellectualism, the schrapnels of noise, and the outlandish creative liberties are still there, but without the funk these elements are uncomfortably exposed, like a naked body standing shivering in the cold.

Contrived, sterile garbage.

Authentic is just not an album anyone should be bothering with.

The desperation of the drinking and the narcissistic banality of the lyrics are matched by songs that have long guitar solos, or places where the bands play loudly against Aldean’s voice--which is often flat, and rarely works enough energy to move past a laconic speech song.

The most regrettable aspect of Matricidal Sons of Bitches is the recognition that Friedberger no longer sounds like an innovator.

This is a cloying record that doesn't so much recall Zeppelin at their height, as The Alarm at their most irritating.

iSouljaBoyTellem ultimately fails because it’s barely memorable, lacking any kind of successor to 'Crank That' to keep Soulja Boy relevant.

It almost hurts to pan this album but probably not as much as listening to the whole thing a fourth time.

Fake ass love-making music was dead in the mid-'90s, let alone the talentless urban landscape of 2010.

Fortune is another overload of poor decisions.

It’s best three tracks--“FALLINLOVETONITE”, “HARDROCKLOVER”, and “1000 X’S & O’S”--are, in the context of Prince’s amazing catalog, average at best. The rest are mediocre to bad to horrifying.

Vultures is best left lying alone amongst its metal clichés and turgid song-writing.

Where surprises could be found with each previous release to give even casual fans something to appreciate, Only by the Night delivers an even serving of Ritalin coma stadium rock destined to raise their prime age demographic.

Even a cursory listen to the album is enough to push the listener into a music-induced coma, and not in a good way. It falls so flat that he should just give Cattle Callin' away for free.

So, the album is uncool, there’s that, and still too ‘90s to be anything different than what came before, anything less than dated.

Reid’s creative phrasing and pulse games are, as always, a fascinating contrast to the rigid rhythmic grids typical of Four Tet constructions, but on NYC the pair doesn’t seem to find a happy middle ground anywhere.

What’s truly embarrassing for G-Unit throughout T*O*S is the way Young Buck shows up (which he does on four separate occasions) and puts everyone to shame.

Everything passes by in a blur on Autumn, Again, with songs fragmented to the point of non-existence.

Out of Nothing is the sound of music being super-sized and stuffed into a happy meal.... Extra large chorus? Check. Grandiose lyrics? Check. Towering instrumentation? Check.

The idea that these guys from Amherst who made chaotic, inscrutable music are somehow ready for the rock canon seems, in itself, to be the height of pretension.