By the time the album ends with the upbeat ballad "The Meadows" (reference point: the Cure), Adventure's run through the '80s feels complete. But I'm not convinced that listeners wouldn't be better served by just seeking out the original synth-pop artists that the album spends so much energy imitating.

It's not that Ensemble has made an actively bad album. It's just that somber music which comes from abstract origins shouldn't be so vacuous and blank.

Uptown Special isn’t quite special enough.

There's not too much to make that vision stand out.

All DeLaughter is left with is this record of weak dos and strong don’ts. DeLaughter can live in the past, but he certainly can’t recreate it.

On When the Sun Goes Down you get a teenybopper posing as a dorm-hardened college junior, and we all know how convincingly that scenario plays.

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sea Lions But Were Afraid to Ask feels more like a home demo that needs considerable polishing than a proper debut album.

It’s a well-crafted, well-performed piece of mediocrity, and that might be the most stinging disappointment of all.

Hotel Shampoo is the sound of craft triumphing over inspiration.

You're Not Alone takes the gruff, untamed I Get Wet and smoothes those edges out, and not even an ultra-high energy level and walls of guitar distortion can mask the fact that this party is loud, but not that fun.

So while the consistency isn’t there yet, if they even do get there, this new direction could take them far.

Does one really want to listen to gorgeous musical crescendos and a falsetto singing “all I do now is dick around/ dick around” or a bouncy plea that “barometric pressure has no relevance to me”?

There’s no denying that he has his own style, but a little more variety in execution might make Under the Skin a more enthralling and thus, listenable experience.

American Capitalist is not a terrible album, but it's definitely a regression for Five Finger Death Punch.

A lot of bad music is plenty catchy, though. To give Kinsella a pass just because Life Like is begrudgingly more melodic would be unfair to the hardworking musicians everywhere who dare to have a better attitude towards sex, music, and everything else than he can ever seem to manage.

Packaged altogether, though, DROKK becomes a towering work that's infuriatingly middling and restricted. Barrow and Salisbury both maintained an atmosphere they establish with the first song incredibly well and offer a few thrills along the way but ultimately DROKK doesn't stand as much more than a curiosity piece for completists.

Kinski seems too satisfied with going down the road that isn't less traveled, and that makes all the difference. This is a pity, because there are, in fact, moments of brilliance within these walls of cock rock impersonation and intellectual thievery.

Todd Smith is glossy, safe, front-loaded, and slick.

It has its moments, but nothing outright triumphs or overwhelmingly compels.

Overall, the disc’s major flaw lies within its cloudy production values.

As far as the sound goes, they do nicely when they are respectful of the reggae tradition, when they mix punchy punk vocals and reggae, and, occasionally, when they mix world music styles with the former. The move into a more electronic dancehall style, however, mostly combines with poor lyrics for a one-two punch that may knock out many listeners from the very first track.

The majority of the material presented here will appeal only to a select group of hardcore fans, music historians and critics.

If anything, it's not that Jackson doesn't try hard to impress, but that he tries too hard to on the record.

Under the Covers, Vol. 3 has more ups and downs than the Texas Cyclone. There are moments that are very good and moments that feel watered down, by the numbers and plain.

Perhaps if these songs were served with a helping of irony, it would be easier to swallow, but as it is, The Glass Passenger crumbles under its own weight, largely due to the fact that McMahon is no longer writing songs just for fun the fun of it.

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.

It's as if Chief wanted to sound as grand as possible, but by wanting to do too much, they ultimately end up accomplishing very little. This is catchy, easy-going stuff; but the obvious and at times, plaintive feel of the record doesn't exactly beg for repeated spins.

The album's shiny surfaces and tight musicianship subtly whisper "don't touch", preventing any serious emotional connection with the music.

Staying at Tamara's is upbeat and light to a fault, a microcosm of cheer mostly blissfully unaware of the chaotic world around it. This is by design, sure, but it also makes the album feel unapologetically, yet unforgivably inconsequential.

Saint Etienne will always be interesting, and may still have a classic album in them, but maybe they need to drop the intellectual tendencies and simply embrace the music of the idols whom they so clearly adore.

It is a love song to the bands they grew up on, at times purely imitation as flattery, and, in those modest goals, it succeeds.

It was a phenomenal album two years ago, when it was called Movement In Still Life and BT released it. Now, in 2002, it just seems dated.

Young Dreams need to tap into this Nordic tradition and come up with something a little bit more compelling next time.

With melodies like these, Jem could be singing lyrics like "Mentos, fresh and full of life" and you'd still never forget the tune. Indeed, upon closer inspection the words she does sing are not much better than a TV jingle.

A lot of what initially made Game an intriguing artist is missing from this release, replaced instead by fleeting moments of great music and extended periods of mediocrity or whackness.

If you’re in it for the live-it-up-till-morning jams (and they are entertaining), then you’re going to be spinning this record at plenty of house parties. But artistically speaking, the album isn’t a progression of the rapper’s career; it’s content to stay on the same eternally- stoned playing field as 2012’s O.N.I.F.C.

Like much of the jokey stuff on Surfing, these songs are far more annoying than they are clever. And they don’t even begin to approach being funny.

Overall, Time is badly balanced and overproduced, but it does offer signs of life while falling short of a genuinely exciting resurgence.

Good moments are spread across 16 tracks, which is significantly more than any previous Owens’ effort, solo or otherwise, and the man’s sound has always been the opposite of unique. Over a prolonged tracklist, his invariant topic matter, coupled with his saccharine singing over slow-mid-tempo songs, becomes much too much.

The album is more scattered in approach, like he's still trying to figure out his best approach to the album format, to his audience, to his genre. In other words, it sounds a lot like country has in general so far this year: comfortable and unfocused.

It’s a serviceable album, but for an artist like Ginuwine, who created three near perfect albums, this is a cynical attempt to stay relevant.

Hot Shit immediately announces its intention to be a purposely difficult listen, and the difficulty persists through the album's eleven tracks.

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.

We have a lot of good ideas and a few not-so-good ones, but none of them are developed as fully as one would desire.

Ultimately, The Abandoned Lullaby is at least worth hearing for RJD2 fans, although musically it's really only a lateral move.

With More!, the impression is not that they're coasting on their reputation and resume. Rather, it seems they're struggling to stay afloat in a dance music world that is constantly changing and seemingly more underground than ever.

Snider is a limited vocalist, so with him in the lead, everything the Hard Working Americans play sort of flattens out.

All of this material is spirited, pleasant, and grounded in the context of rock history, but I'm still wondering who it is I'm listening to.

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

It is overpopulated with recycled pop that is indistinguishable and artificial, something Madonna’s soothing arpeggiating vocals cannot alleviate.

If you like Crystal Stilts previous output, you'll enjoy the Radiant Door EP, a pleasant excursion through their comfort zone.

As focused and professional as it is, the Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack is everything you wouldn’t expect from the Coen brothers: measured, serious, and kind of lifeless.

Side A is all the big, obvious, high-sheen rock, meant to be heard blasting out of speakers in a sweaty dive bar, but it’s stuff that tends to mash together in the haze of a few PBRs. Side B, tho, while hardly a sea change, shows a willingness to grow and experiment.

An overall mood of sub-tropical Pacific torpor (albeit well conveyed and executed) does get a mite soporific over the course of an album, or a handful of them, or a career's worth.

On Falling Down a Mountain, the most depressing thing is the sound of Tindersticks going through the motions.

The commercial success is a victory Simple Minds and its hardcore fans must be savoring. For everyone else, it’s a pretty hollow one.

All in all, very little on Stockholm stands out, despite the best attempts by all involved.

Bastille is only two full-length LPs into its career, and in that time its world has gotten bigger. It’s a shame that it hasn’t gotten any wilder.

Fantasy is, in many ways, comfort listening; the layers of these songs form the sonic equivalent of a warm blanket. Yet this warmth, after all of M83’s successes in refining their style, wanes more quickly than it has in the past.

The band sounds tentative, afraid to step on any toes and too eager to please everyone, shortchanging themselves in the process.

It doesn't know what it wants to be--which is part of its weakness.

Unfortunately for a Phantogram, things begin to fall a little flat in the EP's second half.

The results are too often simply a bit dull, and with the synthesizers verging on the too-tranquil, Yoyogi Park comes too close to music that is better suited to an elevator or shopping mall than an urban outdoor venue.

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

Ultimately, there just isn't enough content here to drive an entire album, and halfway through Taylor loses her footing.

There’s nothing that’s boldly offensive or immediately dismissible, save a few slight missteps.

What’s especially frustrating for Killswitch fans is the fact that they know those tracks, which sound so weak on record, will absolutely kill in a live setting.

“Golden Age” and “End Times” feature some well-honed orchestrations that amplify what could otherwise be fairly rote pieces.... It’s a shame, then, to see the rest of Golden Age spin off into divergent, less interesting directions for the remainder of its runtime.

While the album certainly has cuts worth hearing, it's just not a satisfying listen.

It's sweet, it's charming, Bogart isn't much of a singer but doesn't have to be – but it's all a bit boring.

His unwillingness to let anything breathe for very long might be a weakness, but it's also the trait that keeps all 36 minutes of Two Trains interesting, if not always engaging.

There are occasional moments of inventiveness, but unfortunately, they are often marred by songs that often feel like they’re going to rend at the seams under the weight of too many ideas.

On Halloween, there's nothing bar the title tracks to indicate this is anything more than a random grab-bag of middle-of-the-road electronica.

Imagine Dragons are confident in their capability and knowledge of pop music, but Origins tries too hard to demonstrate their varied interests with the results generic and indistinct.

It’s Album Time is a great casual listen, but it’s obvious from its highlights that Terje is capable of even greater highs.

Unfortunately, not everything works. There a few times when the band reaches too far into the alt-rock zone frequented by modern-day arena acts.

Because it occasionally breaks new ground, Love + Light avoids being an afterthought from start to finish. Even so, the album is far from consistent. While the LP features Avery's typical versatility, that versatility is spread rather thin.

Fans coming to this expecting a Zero 7 album will likely find it thoroughly disorienting and/or frustrating, which is the opposite effect their first three albums produced.

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.

While the group’s carefree attitude toward genre saves Limits of Desire from becoming yet another “Millennials-do-the-‘80s” clone LP, these songs on the whole don’t pack much of a punch.

If there's one thing that Hella doesn't need to convince anyone after four eclectic studio outings, it's that they can play better than most musicians.

There’s still a kernel of originality and true insight in Badly Drawn Boy, but Damon Gough’s going to have to work hard to get back to the spontaneity and true feeling of his past work.

This record is late ‘90s/early ‘00s radio rock nostalgic and comforting. It feels good, but like most things, not as good as the first time.

Over a derivative, drawn-out hour much of the great expectations for The Door Behind The Door slowly and sadly ebb away.

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

Succinctly stated, Mindy Smith’s voice has a power and a complexity that her songs (or her perspectives) have not yet achieved. This leaves Stupid Love a pleasurable and poignant affair, but not as emotionally gripping as it could be, or wants to be.

The Instinct isn't a bad record, especially if you like your music a tad frost-bitten; it's just boring.

A disjointed album, [that] lacks the weight for emotional impact.

The album ends up as a mildly effective collection of subgenre pastiches that only occasionally manages to rise above the recognition of each style.

An album of so-so hook[s] and vapid lyrics.

It would have done good for the band to don the dark and take a step back from the gentle.

It’s populated with misguided love songs (“Sorry”, “Can’t Say No”) and paranoid musings (“Crocodile Python”) that on previous Ross albums would’ve instead been replaced by devoted brag fests.

A decent, but not groundbreaking live album.

Though This Unruly Mess I’ve Made is decent, its biggest failing lies in its quality control. For every good song, there are two mediocre and/or forgettable ones next to them.

The music doesn’t channel the rebellion alluded to the in the album’s title.

Hard II Love feels like a placeholder, a set of songs that sound perfectly fine while they’re on and become forgettable when they’re not.

Ultimately Hymns leaves the listener as exhausted and listless as Okereke’s downbeat lyrics (which too often read like adolescent poetry). The elements just don’t come together.

No matter how sweet blink-or-you'll-miss-'em offerings "Wrong Feels Right" and the title track are at points (especially during the pre-choruses), He Gets Me High ultimately proves to be empty calories.