They set the table for a full-on renaissance, then stopped a couple courses short. With judicious programming, the best two-thirds of History of Modern will give you just enough of that old OMD magic to warrant a purchase. The problem is, it's also just enough to make the rest of the album break your heart.

Ultraísta is inventive but it overloads on likeness and similarity. There's enough here to warrant several listens and maybe even an impulse purchase but not quite enough to suggest that a follow-up record is necessary.

Much of “Ninth Ward” takes twists and turns you’ll see coming a mile down the boulevard--the choruses swell when they’re supposed to, the guitars are right up front and the bridges arrive at all the right times.

Brain Thrust Mastery contains a lot more variety than its predecessor, which, although enjoyable, blended together at times.

Overproduction ultimately damns this record as much as anything, with everything cranked to 11 and Rogue’s voice constantly reverbed. Permalight sounds like a band who’s incredibly eager to impress, which wasn’t how Rogue emerged on the scene, a singer of simple pop songs.

Unfortunately, the music gets bogged down with strings and other symptoms of overproduction.

He came up with a good set of songs, but failed to achieve what I perceive this type of music is supposed to.

Regardless of how they describe it, it's all code for "this sounds absolutely awful." There's really no excuse for something that sounds this bad in 2011 except as an aesthetic choice.

Unfortunately, the latter half of the album tapers off as the band fails to find a suitable landing place and the tracks begin to blur together.

Nothing on Wild Animals is interesting or distinct enough to set Trampled By Turtles apart in this increasingly crowded genre.

This record is easy to listen to, forget, and confuse with something else.

It tends to dilute the very elements that make the band unique.

Don't Believe the Truth might be the best Oasis album in eight years, but that doesn't mean you won't be shaking your head in incredulity from time to time.

Yup, Banjo or Freakout is definitely best enjoyed at night or stoned, or both.

His demeanor and cultural significations work to blur the reality of his musical contributions, consisting of, on the one hand, jolting blasts and twinkles, syrupy phrasings, disjointed melodies, and, on the other, forceful misinterpretations of self-worth, love, sexism, communication, epistemology, friendship, listening, asking, requesting, demanding, self-expression, and self-protection.

It’s an album that embodies the idea of potential that isn’t fully realized.

There will always be something uplifting, something horrific, and something silly on a Spearhead album, and Yell Fire! is no different.

Ultimately, Cheek to Cheek is pleasant through and through. It’s not the greatest standards duets album ever recorded, but nor is it a dud.

With the melodies of Preparations displaying the most striking progress, it’s the beat less bonus disc that stands to be the most exciting part of the package.

That means when Perfect Symmetry is at its best, you’ll think of a-ha, and when it’s at its worst...Go West, anyone? And yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and underneath it all, this is very much a Keane album.

Though not a stand-out EP, James Blake is to be commended for attempting the path of the latter.

It’s a party record with random hints of sci-fi. The challenges, though, of producing a truly inventive, kinetic collaboration with so many big names must have been massive--the expression “like a kid in a candy store” comes to mind--and N.A.S.A. shows no particular brilliance on this outing.

Though it might pain those fans who prefer Ozomatli to be Ozomatli, the album’s best tracks are those on which the band finally comes to realize they can be whatever they want to be.

Yes, Wells' talent is incredible and plainly evident, but the music here wasn't that engaging.

This mishmash of ideas is exploited again and again on Time Was, as the two strike an honest balance stylistically but fail to deliver anything much more than fragmentary.

It’s an album that’s hard to love, yet easy to like.

But for every misstep early in the album, the final tracks deliver a compelling argument in favor of Evelyn’s continued creative relevance.

It’s good-girl soul for the Starbucks set.

Run the Road Volume Two works as a fun soundtrack to a dimly-lit, vodka and Red Bull drenched basement party. But if you really want to kick the party into gear, the album’s older brother is still the one to podcast.

The lack of substance, coupled with an occasionally overwhelming “lite-ness” that veers dangerously close to easy-listening, makes Complete Strangers a less than solid effort.

Life Coach is worth a listen, but its best use may prove to be the excuse to revisit the records that it quotes and the bands that made its existence possible in the first place.

Swoon’s self-induced flaws are endless, which is disappointing because Silversun Pickups seem like great musicians who could easily craft an exciting song--if they stepped out of the Pumpkins’ shadow.

There are almost as many great ideas on abounding across this record as on any prior album form the band. It’s just that this time their execution left a lot to be desired.

It’s so pure it borders on sterile.

Everything from the synth work to the drum tracks sound the same, and this, on top of the fact that Emika’s vocal delivery rarely changes, makes the album slightly (but only slightly) disappointing.

The Phoenix Foundation never really were a rock band. But Fandango just doesn’t roll often enough.

Rather than the careless tracks sounding like harmless asides (even if they didn’t make up a fair amount of the album), they come across like an MC wandering.

It’s fine enough, but it’s just not memorable in any real tangible way.

In previous projects, Francis has demonstrated an ability to describe his world in vivid color. But when all you see is red, it’s hard to speak on anything else.

Colonia plays it safe by gathering together various aspects of the Cardigans/Camp catalogue and adorning them to the brim with pretty, but unsatisfying decoration.

Despite showing several flashes of brilliance, Jay-Z stumbles through his most uninspired and disappointing album to date.

Four months later comes this follow-up EP, Panic of Looking, showing off the same arcane package of circumstantial synthesizer jitters banging against a bunch of I-get-this-poem-and-you-don't kind of prose.

Big TV is a solid album, and it very much retains the White Lies sound. For existing fans it’s worth a listen, and it certainly won’t offend, but it probably won’t convert many new ears.

What the Ting Tings do is make sunny, punchy pop songs, and what’s more, that’s something that actually do pretty well. How much lifespan there is in the project, however, is another question entirely.

That it comes off a bit too orchestrated and muted around the edges isn’t a large criticism, but it sure would be interesting to hear the band let loose for a change.

It was rich vocal harmonies and deft musical playing that drew us to Los Lonely Boys in 2004, not ambitious or over reaching songwriting skills. And on Rockpango, Los Lonely Boys are sticking with what got them this far.

It will go down as an odd little duck because James understand that sometimes you need to baffle your audience while engaging them.

As it stands, the album shows us our heroine at her most malleable and, while it’s an enjoyable listen, there’s nothing as joyfully buoyant as Estelle’s 2005 Kanye West-assisted single “American Boy”.

To Careless World's credit, at its worst it's an album that's really hard to feel any sort of way about. But it's also hard to completely ignore how well made it is.

On the whole, Traps is definitely worth a listen, but it's clear that the band can do much better.

Poor Moon still feels like its developing, like it's unsure of what it will be yet. This makes their first full-length an uneven, sometimes frustratingly safe record, but it also makes it an album of some promise.

It’s actually the mid-tempo songs where No Guts. No Glory. starts to flag, as “No Way But the Hard Way” and “Blonde, Bad and Beautiful” coast along, feeling lazy while the other 11 songs at the very least feel impassioned.

In some ways The Appeal could feel similar to Eminem's Encore, another album whose deal-breaking antics in the middle section rendered it unlistenable.

It's more theatrical than early Stew albums, bringing the unique sense of a stage composition: varied instrumentation, clear evocative vocals and honest-to-goodness storytelling.

Take the record for what it is--a breezy, fun but ultimately unfulfilled attempt at an electro-pop statement album.

As it stands, Vicissitude is the very dictionary definition of mostly fat, and not enough lean meat that you can really sink your teeth into.

Arie is pretty upbeat about love on this album, but when describing her feelings, she falls back too much on stock, recycled phrases.

Such Hot Blood instead reads as a miasma of ham-fisted metaphors and visual similes coupled with musical impulses that neither enlighten nor challenge the listener.

Fierce Bliss has a few breakthrough moments, but overall it steps back to familiar ground: too much thunder and not enough light.

For better and for worse, Pusha T and Malice complement their beat selection on Til the Casket Drops. And it all makes for one of the year’s biggest disappointments from two of hip-hop’s best lyricists.

The formula seems to be consistent throughout. Pond’s songwriting prowess is repeatedly outdone by his inexcusable execution.

It's got a lot of good musical ideas, but very few of those ideas seem to come to fruition.

AmeriKKKant is not a great album, and objectively, it's hard even to call it a good one. That said, it feels like Ministry, and it honest-to-god soars at times.

Blood Red Shoes is an album firmly wedged in comfort, occasionally straying out into more interesting waters, but usually retreating to old tricks. For an album that tries so hard to be angry it’s just mild.

It would be unfair to call Battle Studies an outright misfire, but it’s undoubtedly a regression on his winding, forward-moving path toward artistic maturity. Two steps forward, one step back then.

The album doesn’t have a lot of replay value, and the songwriting is hit-or-miss, but Aloe Blacc is able to tap into a market that isn’t seeing a lot of action right now.

There is nothing here that is going to cross over to the mainstream, and individually, the tracks aren’t even all that interesting, save perhaps for Le1f’s moment early on. The context provided by listening to the album all the way through is what saves it, what gives it a point of view.

Dragging 10 quite ordinary Woodpigeon songs over 45 minutes makes Thumbtacks + Glue a sadly laborious and pedestrian listen, bereft of the wonder in the best of Hamilton’s previous work.

All the songs bop along at about the same pace, all interpreted in the same rocksteady style, and this makes the proceedings a bit wearisome towards the end.

There's a Fire is neither innovative nor exciting; rather, it's a bit boring.

The band’s weakness may well be that it has become comfortable in its awkward and uncomfortable sound.

The back half is full of heartbreak, happiness, and all things teenage life over some really good instrumentals varying from trap to reggae to ballads. It has arc. It has feeling. But for some reason, Yachty thought that bragging about himself, calling out haters, and trying to prove that he can rap (he shouldn’t so much) was more important than creating something focused and sincere.

Recurring Dream is the band’s attempt to carry their sound forward by small steps. But these small steps are a slog, and Recurring Dream trips on its own repetition.

The mix of the two makes The Colossus sound like a work by an artist who is maturing rather than lashing out.

Beyond its opening hat trick, Emoh dissolves into a retread of the same psychic wound, recycling the same themes with less inspired, more pedestrian results.

Back to Light never quite gets it together, but it’s not for lack of trying.

While there are some real gems here, occasionally the songs tend to fade into generic background folk music.

The music does at times reach the heights of Trilogy: the main lick of "Try Me" and the excellent beat on "Hurt You" reveal flickers of creative flame in Tesfaye's songwriting. Yet the primary impression left by My Dear Melancholy is that however visible those flames, their faintness is what sticks in the memory.

On American Central Dust, they just don’t take that earnest country feel as far as it could go.

Flirting dangerously with the overly cerebral, the Shipping News somehow manage to isolate (at least a part of) the traumatized heart of enough of these songs to make this collection worthwhile.

Sadly, AAF don't seem to have come away from their near-death experience with any sense of their own limitations or their own transience. Instead the band simply exists within these limitations.

It’s paint-by-numbers Harlem rap from the Jim Jones era, and frankly, in 2014 there’s just too much going on in hip hop for this to carry much sway, leaving Dream.Zone.Achieve a too-long-by-half 80-minute course in hard-nosed Harlem rap with plenty of good beats but without a distinct voice to guide it.

Many of Lion Babe’s ditties fall short of achieving anything in particular, making it a pleasant enough album, but one that is quickly forgettable.

Although the album doesn't hang together well, the few great songs are dark, rich, and instantly memorable.

The material is there, as is the voice, but too often the two become muddled despite her best efforts to the contrary. If nothing else, Detour is a enjoyable glimpse into a career path untaken.

Spin this disc even once, and you'll understand both the hype and the varied reaction.

Post War Years is simply an outfit that still needs to figure out what it is, and get past its seeming identity crisis and attempts at broad audience appeal. In short, guys: pick a style and stick with it.

These are tracks that have the ability to win over those who wrote off Rachel Kenedy’s vocals from the first album: it’s a step forward for weird-voiced frontwomen all over.

Nash calls herself and this approach contradictory, and maybe that's the best way to describe this album, but that carries a semblance of dismissing the issues she sings through and the realities she and her fans, listeners, and others experience all too often.

If you’re looking for the daring next step in Asobi Seksu’s sonic evolution, this is not it. Instead, Rewolf is nothing more ambitious than a very good album of acoustic renderings.

Structurally, the album makes itself up to be an emotional story, one lacking in complexities that would make such a skeletal frame have its flesh. But that facet is not easy to gauge with the bare repetitions of phrase that have little in mind but cause those reluctant to view electronic music to roll their eyes, while also making prided veterans give DJDS’s effort the benefit of the doubt.

Departure is an ambitious and brave debut, one that reveals a lot of promise and an awfully big sound for just two players.

The group has effectively reinvented/refound itself as a crack power-pop band.

Manages both annoyance and perfection.

So what's the problem with Mobb Deep in 2004?... The answer is every song not produced by Havoc.

If there’s not any huge shift from the album’s stylistic composition, at least it rarely sounds homogenous or monotonous. Still, at times, one wishes Carpenter would take more sonic risks or ditch some of the New Age metaphors that can sound frivolous.

All in all, Julian Plenti is...Skyscrapper comes across as more of an afterthought.

I concede that playing by old school rules produces most of As U Were's hottest bangers....On the album's lesser half, the hooks are just as big but weak, and the rhyming is sluggish or scarce.