It's rather far from being a poor album, but there's no real argument to be made for the existence of as a standalone work. For that, a bit more tangential newness should be expected, but Ben Ottewell is disinclined to provide it.

As well intentioned as it is, with occasional mesmerizing production that flutters back and forth, everything leaves you feeling like there should have been more at the root of this project.

As good as it sounds, it simply fails to make a statement.

On this, their second album, MONEY have created a difficult listen on two levels. Firstly, in creating a collection of songs which, if not directly about suicide, often convey a hopeless state of mind and heart. Secondly, owing to the awkward collision of some fine playing with a largely monotonous production and some painfully strained singing from vocalist/guitarist Jamie Lee.

Although I prefer the rougher edges of earlier efforts, this is Talkdemonic's best mixed and most expansive record to date.

Sadly, though, Golden Age of Knowhere peaks at the beginning and slides gradually downhill from the moment "New York City Moves to the Sound of LA" ends.

Late Love is the sound of a band who knows how to rock, but just not in the right way.

It’s fascinating, in moments, to hear where the band started out, where it stumbled in frustration and where it wandered fruitfully, but too much of Desert Skies confirms for us what Rademaker highlights in the notes: the band was tired of rock music.

This handful of keepers is unfortunately not enough to redeem what is otherwise an entire record’s worth of vapidity.

Time to Go Home seems like half the album it could have been.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Pop Makossa, it’s just hard to pinpoint things about it that rise above any other Analog Africa album. Consider it a pleasant addition to your collection--just don’t expect to want to listen to it more than once.

There's little doubt that Sun and Shade could be a satisfying 30-minute indie-folk record with a bit of self-editing. Simply put, Woods would be wise to keep the psych-drone exercises in the live department, where they're more of a treat and less of a chore.

No doubt these songs will come to life on stage, but on record, they land a bit flat.

All that studio thaumaturgy is still present on The Sun and the Neon Light, but as Booka Shade’s bid that they’re human after all, the calculations here come off with a less-than-wholly organic equation that feels flat, not taking into account the wild variation that comes with raw human contact.

It's a subtly bold step and one the band should continue to investigate, regardless of the fact that it didn't quite work out in their favor here.

There is nothing wrong with working a beloved genre and working it hard; however, if faithful imitation is substituted for inspiration and energy, the results tend to be kind of underwhelming.

All of the composite aspects that make this band so compelling are present on Then Came the Morning. Unfortunately, they’re misallocated in pretty obvious ways.

While the songs are engaging and rewarding, they’re not definitive and it’s difficult not to be disappointed that more obscurities and lost dogs didn’t find a home on this compilation.

Some bands, indeed many of those mentioned in this review, can combine the two [writing pop songs or experimental soundscapes] with panache, but until Violens learn to do one or the other with confidence, the results will always be as scatterbrained and self-indulgent as Amoral.

This is a spotty effort at best, and the loosely-connected space theme ends up putting some of the album's weaker material in the spotlight instead of allowing it to be glossed over as just another album track.

Sadly, Parks’ spectral strains are probably the most memorable part of her hookup with Brian Jonestown Massacre’s sitar swinging Svengali Anton “Keep Music Evil” Newcombe.

Ultimately, Red only has a couple of catchy moments, and seems like the kind of thing that you can listen to in the blink of an eye and it's over before it makes any sort of impact.

Barker has a good voice that is well-suited to this kind of material and a good sense of how to accompany his voice with his guitar. The problem, then, is mostly that the songwriting just isn’t very strong.

Unfortunately, as a whole, this record gets too monotonous during one sitting. It's just computer processor after computer processor, with a real instrument thrown in periodically.

Sawdust is an interesting look at other aspects of the Killers’ sound, but as a standalone disc, it’s largely hit-or-miss.

On its own, it’s an interesting album that becomes torpid much too often. But when compared to Dream River, it completely crumbles.

At its best, Finisterre finds Saint Etienne exploring new moods within their familiar formula of '60s acoustic sounds meet '90s electronica rhythms; at its worst, which is far more often, it clumsily grafts hip-hop and electro-synth on to the group's increasingly shopworn pop hooks.

These are collaborations worth hearing, but in no way at all do they add up to an end product that is particularly memorable or consistently engaging.

A decidedly inconsistent effort.

Though Arbouretum comes out more interestingly here than Hush Arbors, Wood's music is a more intriguing in its weirdness.

It’s just that Stills loses this sense of purpose and intensity when Gauntlet Hair opts for creating the shadowy, haunting atmosphere that settles over the much of the album, with many of the experiments resembling a stylistic jumble that neither showcases the band’s undercover catchiness nor brings out the darker impulses they seem hell bent on exploring.

While it’s refreshing to hear Moby refuse to succumb to complacency, the shallow, steely sound of These Systems Are Failing contradicts and undoes much of its rawness, making for a set that is more alienating than rousing.

The songs are all melodic, and somewhat alluring in how they build sunshine from twinkling pianos, tambourines, and campfire guitars. But they tend to wash away together, under one big, bright sunbeam.

Even the sax, which on the debut could unexpectedly tickle your ears right when you thought the band had run out of hooks, sounds like it's here through obligation. And while Top's singing is still committed, it's less buoyant and less assured.

They don’t do nearly enough with the brief window of opportunity they have afforded themselves, and seem too fashionably pent-up to take that key leap of faith beyond the terra firma of their dominant influences in the foreseeable future.

It’s so pure it borders on sterile.

A return to DIY hardcore aesthetics may find this ferocity translated to record--a quality that is regrettably smothered by an ill-advised rock ’n’ roll swagger and a sterile production.

Though Folie a Deux is still riddled with problems (ending the disc with the Survivor-esque closer 'West Coast Smoker' makes for a somewhat hurried conclusion), it’s still a musical leap in the right direction for the band, as it adds just enough new elements to keep things interesting while not straying too far from the sound that made them big in the first place.

It’s catchy and shows faint glimmers of his true talent, but it comes off like a tossed off, half baked batch of outtakes from sessions where his more impressive music was produced.

It's possible that fans of mellow, laid-back rock will savor this album, but overall, lethargy overwhelms inventiveness on all but a handful of tracks.

Maybe Galactic is best as just an instrumental band, or maybe they need a new vocalist (the last one split a couple of years ago), or maybe they just need to pick more interesting hip-hop artists to work with. Any way you slice it, though, this album just isn't getting it done.

Where his previous records felt vital and exciting, The Bachelor often sounds staid and predictable.

Without the flair for the unexpected that Owens made his reputation with, A New Testament feels like a counter intuitive statement for a songwriter whose known for having such a distinctive personality.

Minnesota native Adam Young, the one-man band behind Owl City, has crafted an incredibly upbeat album filled with starry-eyed lyrics and electro-pop fluff.

The album is full of songs that falter either for a lack of a guiding beat or because of misguided lyrics that carry little purpose.

The harder moments on Decimation Blues feels too forced in their oddness, too self-conscious for us to really follow.

It's one of those rap albums that's disappointing as often as slightly engaging, and oftentimes is hard to pinpoint exactly what's letting you down.

The handful of tracks that work on Ratworld demonstrate that Menace Beach has potential. But the rest of the album shows clearly that while the group has a distinctive sound, they just aren’t there yet from a songwriting perspective.

There’s no doubt that Electric Lines will be the basis for some excellent live sets. But as an album, most of these songs offer too little innovation, too little variation, and too little life.

Trimmed down to a good 35-40 minutes, and with a producer like Kurt Ballou instead of the more polished-sounding Garth Richardson, this might have been the provocative, inflammatory second record that Gallows fans had hoped for. Instead we’re left with yet another young band whose reach far exceeds its grasp.

These songs are gaudy and daring, but they’re gaudy and daring in ways we heard 20 and 30 years ago.

Ultimately, Sweet Talker falls short of pop glory.

Quarrell has an interesting knack for texture on Ex Tropical, but his melodies are always playing catch up, while the textures themselves sound constantly in search of playmates they never quite find.

So Joel Peterson’s new-and-improved side project still resembles a guitarist experimenting in between what is probably his more important job.

Despite some truly inspired songs, One Plus One doesn't have the same dizzying effect as the genre-hopscotching Bewilderbeast or the orchestrated beauty of confident follow-ups About a Boy and Have You Fed the Fish?.

They tempt us with a strong first half and then dump us in a collection of tossed off b-sides.

So, while Indie Cindy is not an objectively bad album, it does fail to live up to the Pixies’ caliber, and a few noteworthy songs does not an exceptional record make.

While it may be a difficult task to get through all 12 psycho-babble-filled tune on havoc, it's not entirely a wash or without merit. Ultimately, if you're not into hearing someone use their artistic expression to vent their frustrations and contemplate fairly uneducated meanderings on the current social state, or you're not struggling with your own identity lacking the mental capacity to understand your surroundings, you need not apply.

Without any true sonic signifiers to really separate this record from Drozd and Coyne’s primary outfit, it simply feels like another of the Flaming Lips’ disposable ideas that are fun for a few weeks.

On Do You Wonder About Me?, it sounds as if the more professional in-studio approach rounded off the edges that made the band's best moments so compelling.

Superhero Brother gives the impression that G. Love is deeply embedded in his comfort zone – probably not a good thing for a white guy trying to recapture the sloppy blues of his glory days.

Unfortunately, while Paul maintains a similar tone and approach almost throughout, the MCs he's working with don't, and this is the album's ultimate downfall.

For an album that promised to show us the real Jennifer Lopez straight from the heart, it struggles to stand on its own two feet. This Is Me…Now ultimately loses itself in its self-indulgent proclamations of heart and the supposedly greatest love story never told.

The unavoidable truth is, Mum is struggling to find itself.

Some listeners will find this to be powerful rainy-day music, the kind of stuff to get lost in while staring out the window at the rain. Most of us, though, will run out of patience long before the end.

While the artwork borders on the iconic and the concept is very much in sitting with the band’s oeuvre, musically, The Night Creeper is a sub-standard addition to the canon of one of the most promising bands in modern rock.

On Your Sleeve acts only as a fine stopgap until Malin’s next release proper. This late October disc still plays as more treat than trick for his loyal fanbase.

It is not good and and it is not bad. Most of it is just present and accounted for.

Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, for all its faults, isn’t really an awful album--it’s more a matter of the idea that when you’re given a daunting 78 minutes of media (and no skits, which is awesome), it’s easy to find a whole pile of problems.

It’s an interesting album, just not interesting in a way that particularly compels me to listen to it again.

No matter how many dark subjects are nested throughout, too often the music on Exile falls back into the same old tricks of bells-and-whistles pop choruses and obvious hooks.

By the end of the record, it's clear that the more focused Ling is on presentation and the more work Wrench puts in on actually making songs and not just scattered musical ideas, the better audiobooks are. It's a shame they didn't figure that out for themselves before putting out a full album.

The tension that made Mase's early songs so captivating is gone.

What's most shocking about Hot Fuss, though, is how, after five sensational songs, the rest of the album completely implodes, as the other six tracks get weighed down by too much production, a lack of memorable hooks, and some inexplicable musical touches that may have sounded clever in the studio, but wind up sounding disastrous on the CD.

There’s little doubt that Cornog is an excellent songwriter, his sense of melody and hook is impeccable, but What Are You On?, despite some fine moments, feels distracted and too brief with 13 songs in just over 35 minutes.

Somehow, Arcade Fire have created an album that’s one half an exciting return to form and the other a continuation of their worst impulses.

Many of these songs would benefit from a bit of contrast in terms of dynamics and tempos. And oh yeah, it would be great to understand a few lines of lyrics here and there.

Overall on Mirror Mirror, Sons and Daughters sound like they are borrowing from the Interpol version of post-punk rather than the real thing.

Truthfully, it’s not that bad of a record by usual standards, I suppose. It’s just that this is the D-Plan, after all, and you’re expecting something better.

It's all flawlessly performed and comforting in its predictability.

The problem with Challengers, however, is not its decelerated speed--it’s that the songs aren’t uniformly strong.

Despite unwittingly creating an album whose skin-deep sheen happens to be a metaphor for his career-long relationship with his audience, Tricky is offering us little more than an appetizer.

Often Lie, even in its brevity, loses a lot of steam after the opening tracks.

All in all, Danzig in the Moonlight is a startlingly average record.

On the handful of songs on MAYA that find her exploring new musical territory, Maya doesn't fare much better. It often feels like she's casting about, trying to figure out where she fits into the pop landscape.

It’s a bit melodramatic in places and maybe a touch too hip for its own good.

999 Levels of Undo shows that Fisk's transformation is still a work in progress, but when he's on, the record is right up there with any of Fisk's other accomplishments.

For all their talk of trespass and release and lock-popping, Glambert's songs unleash very little Glambert.

Bossalinis & Fooliyones is a perfectly plain little rap album, one that's 70 minutes long for no real good reason and comes and goes with little remarkable occurring either good or bad.

Time will only tell if this peculiar off-the-grid move garners the same sort of reverence Dead Cities owns today.

To Where the Wild Things Are proposes an interesting if familiar journey, but the kitschy, “poppier” first half feels oddly lifeless.

Dom certainly isn't the only band around turning to the most questionable parts of music's past, but just because they're not alone doesn't make it a less perplexing choice. It lends otherwise compelling pop songs an air of irony they don't need, and makes a well-composed and well-recorded EP sound too thin in spots.

Elysium is woefully short on what Tennant and Lowe do best, which is disarmingly sharp pop songs that stick in your head but also leave you thinking afterward. There are some good ideas at play here, for sure, but neither the music nor the lyrics do them justice.

So much promise and so little worth revisiting, Zoot Woman’s eagerly anticipated return to the electronic music scene rarely reaches the glittering heights of its shimmering title.

Caramel would have made an intriguing EP, but as a full length album it’s a true test of patience for the listener and the musical equivalent of awkwardly stumbling into a room where your sweat-drenched parents are having sex.

Proving itself far more shallow than its deepest waters can attest to, Spinnerette is admittedly half of interesting project. However, it is also half of a bloated but ultimately empty mess.

Yes, it's interesting – but it will leave most of those outside small academic circles feeling a little cold.

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