If you wanna know how NOT to do it, listen to the last five tracks on Goodbye Lullaby. Avril wrote them all herself, and let's just say she's an artist who benefits from collaboration.

While it has its fine moments, in the end Hymns falters too often by mimicking the first record, and, in that way, the impact of both records may be diminished.

The Brazilian Girls have constantly impressed folks because of their multiplicity, but the next step is finding a way to combining these elements in a subtle fashion to work as a complete album. New York City has taken many steps in that direction, but there is still work to be done for the band to carve its niche.

Kid Sister’s debut is utterly lacking in catchy hooks, fun-filled call and responses, or even those unspeakable dirty lyrics that you would never repeat to mother. Instead, the majority of the album plays out like a bunch of throwaway b-side beats over dull, unoriginal rhymes despite Kid Sister’s tight flow.

The musicians are capable, it sounds fine, the songs aren’t bad by any means. But none of those descriptions are exactly praise--only one or two songs stand out in my mind when I’m not actively listening to the album, but active listening doesn’t give back the kind rewards that we expect from the non-pop records that usually require it.

Not so much a step in the wrong direction as a step in far too many different directions at once.

Quiet Nights contains a few surprises, even if they are dressed up in slow finery.

There are moments on Untogether where the music comes close to the sensuality that it frequently hints at, but it’s so caught up in embracing separation that it pushes out anything resembling redemption.

She mostly sounds tired, and her voice seems wrapped in gauze. The record is grandiosely overproduced, so Ross often competes with walls of instrumentation and always loses.

The most glaring problem with The Lost Riots is that it's just no fun.

Ultimately, the only nightmarish aspect about Welcome 2 My Nightmare is how dully predictable it is.

There is no denying that LaVette has a hell of a voice. On Thankful N' Thoughtful – as on her other work – it's a massive, destructive, ragged thing... [Yet] she has the voice, but not the songs. She has tried to overcome this by working with songs from other artists; the results are mixed.

The artist have the skill and style to create more great art, but on Mockingbird Time, the stigma of great art is too present.

For a band that is now nearly a decade into its career, to release an album that retreads their superior earlier material with far less passion and conviction is about as depressing as the music is.

With The Origin of Love it sounds like he's sacrificed that youthful glee in his songwriting for club anthems that aren't really all that mature.

Closing waltz "These Falling Arms" shows off the band's skill at weaving together sighing guitars with an easygoing melody. By comparison, the remaining eight selections sandwiched in the middle range from not-bad to kinda-boring.

It all seems too clean, too polished, and too shiny. Now and then, there are little hints of the raw power of their early work. But generally it all seems so sadly professional.

Better to eschew the album altogether (it’s not at all cohesive, if that criterion means anything to you) and purchase the few essential tracks if possible: “Illumination”, “Still Feels Like Tears” and “Poem of a Dead Song” all of which evoke the band’s best moments.

More often than not, Ruscha can't recapture that feeling of spontaneity, and the line between insouciance and sloppiness is small but important.

Castle is a good vocalist and a skilled guitar player, but her songwriting abilities seem to be a work in progress.

Survival is a listenable album, but the songcraft leaves something to be desired. It seems like Hardy needs to find a way to play to her strengths more consistently, and it will make her songs more effective.

Blakeslee finds himself torn across the aforementioned line of mainstream opus and neo-psychedelia territory.

That an artist's introversion sometimes has to come at the expense of catchy songs is fine. It's the record's lack of variation (a la playful ditties like "Laughing Gas") that weighs down the proverbial whole.

While most Against Me! fans are likely to think New Wave is inferior to their previous work--and they’re probably right--this is still an album that gets their foot in the door to the big show, and if they use it as something to build on, they can do some damage in the future.

This can’t be recommended for anyone but a pretty serious fan.

Does it succeed on its own terms? In the case of Van Weezer, the answer isn't clear. It's too patchy to be a Yes but far too tuneful and breezy to be a No.

While Evolution is certainly well-crafted it won't be nearly enough to invigorate or re-invigorate anything or anyone.

It's a short set, with just eight songs running a little over 20 minutes, but the poppy hooks come in gauzy droves.

You Will Eventually Be Forgotten boasts some solid craftsmanship, which is quite endearing, but also has some wretched singing, making the proceeding seem rather average at best.

The highlights scatter thinly throughout the disc.

After the confident aire that helped make No Ghost as good as it is, Vieux Loup feels like a regression, a “safe” record that fails to capitalize on the growth we were seeing throughout the Acorn’s tenure.

The 12 songs on Young the Giant are well-written, well-arranged, and well-performed. It's all good material and decently catchy, but there isn't much that sets Young the Giant apart.

Turin Brakes have made an album which is "OK". No dizzying heights or subterranean lows. You may raise an eyebrow every now and again, but nothing about this music grabs your attention and holds it.

Ultimately, the album still feels more like a cul-de-sac.

Barring a couple solid songs that fit their catalog fairly nicely, What Went Down offers nothing that their previous albums don’t deliver in a much more satisfying and ample way.

While she doesn’t hit a sour note on this release, her interpretation of these classics leaves a lot to be desired.

There are more good songs than bad, but the bad songs are very seriously flawed, and will likely stand out more than the positive aspects of the good songs.

It feels a little slack and underdeveloped to be as truly affecting.

Not a whole lot about Wish Hotel really points into a new direction or finds Mondanile straying too far from his comfort zone.

For those with an indie record collection longer than any Christmas list, it will fit right in. It would just be nice if Tyvek would stand out more instead of quietly doing its job.

Unfortunately, the “To Here Knows When” cover is one of only three peaks in an otherwise unremarkable selection of songs.

It’s quite relaxed and pretty overall, but lacks emotional punch.

My guess is that Breakout isn’t fun enough or accomplished enough to really excite any segment of her fan base; rather, it’s just enjoyable enough and shows just enough flashes of maturation and skill to halt doubts regarding Cyrus’s future in the entertainment industry.

The countless line of garage revival bands that extends featurelessly into the past just makes Xray Eyeballs' beginners approach stand out even less.

The music is decorative more than substantive and feels like pleasant wallpaper for your local coffee shop.

Fragments sounds too much like a victory lap to feel like a compelling artistic statement. There’s nothing wrong with being accessible, but Fragments just doesn’t bring enough new ideas to the table. The album represents a rare step back from one of the 21st century’s leading electronic luminaries.

Willie brings everything he’s got to bear, acquiting himself admirably in an otherwise miscalculated effort.

Red was probably meant to run rings around listeners while the duo wore the Cheshire’s cat grin beneath their pokerfaces. Unfortunately it doesn’t really make the cut.

The songs work best when the record’s prevailing tone of opiated dreaminess is punctured with moments of unease: “All the birds are just chickens anyway / So we washed the blood from our hands.” Unfortunately, such moments are few.

The good news is that, at times, the Babies break from this trend. Ramone and Morby challenge each other's approaches to songwriting and performing, and the results are electric and lasting. In other places, perhaps too many, they indulge established habits. While those moments don't always fail, they certainly don't give us anything new.

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

Has many soaring moments and just as many ill-fated collisions.

It’s a shame that St. Lucia’s work is riddled by persistently criminal overproduction and weak moments.

Ultimately, in the overall sweep of Nightwish's rich and varied discography, Human. :||: Nature. comes across as more of a minor note than a magnum opus.

Theater of the Mind, ultimately, is a difficult record to absorb. It’s not so much Ludacris’ persona that’s changed and yet this album tries to almost completely change his sound.

Decent Work for Decent Pay is choppy and uneven, as many compilation albums are inevitably going to be.

Giving up the Ghost is the type of album to play as background music at a party when no one has to pay too much attention to it. Then afterwards, everyone remembers how hip and cool the music sounded. It's often propulsive, sometimes memorable, but only half extraordinary.

While 18 Months, Harris’s third solo full-length, is pretty much the hit-making monster that launched him in to the world spotlight, the truth of the matter is that it feels like a rather compromised vision of who he is an artist, sacrificing his quirkiness for a brooding new persona that starts to get stale over the course of a complete full-length.

Familiarity dominates the group's latest effort, Friends For Now. It succeeds in setting a mood of a rather altered state of mind, but the tunes resemble one another more often than not.

Ultimately Rapture isn’t the only thing that’s Secondhand on MS MR’s often underwhelming and frustratingly predictable début.

He's a hard worker and you can hear it in his music. Granted, that's sometimes all you can hear, but even solid craftsmanship has its rewards.

For every captivating thing here, like the chiming, excited "Dressed Sharply", there are far too many songs that are frozen at mid-tempo, leaving the album feeling too uniform to leave much of an impression, either in individual moments or as a whole.

Heartworms has some songs that longtime Shins fans will appreciate, and they should seek out those songs. But in the age of unlimited audio streaming, it is hard to make a case that the entire album is worth their time.

Welcome the Worms lacks an awareness as to how lethargic it can be. Its lack of energy can demonstrate how tiring life is, but it can bring discomfort to an audience that might want to rock to a devil-may-care attitude.

This album is proof that today's incarnation isn't exactly sure about where they will be tomorrow in spite of having a firm grasp on where they were yesterday.

The album has no theme and at the end of the day we still don't know who B.o.B. is outside of his affinity for protective eye wear. We just know that he is capable of more than Strange Clouds.

Although it’s the band’s weakest outpouring of material, it’s truly impossible to loathe In Through the Out Door because of its charm.

The band sounds re-energized here, and while the quality of the songs is very up and down, they at least all have their muscle back.

On I Told You I Was Freaky, the joke often appears to be that they’re performing a certain kind of song (like sing-song-y a cappella or reggae), rather than the song’s actual content. Such jokes wear thin quickly, making them novelty songs in the worst sense of the word--amusing when new, tired immediately thereafter.

It’s just the Roots resting on the laurels. I think they may need another movement.

Just underwhelming.

Unsteady and muddled.

Its first half is genuinely brimming with energy in a way that promises a return to the joyful pop of the Kaisers Chiefs’ debut. It does, however, tail off badly.

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.

Although a half-a-handful of the songs on this are palatable, most of the record is filler that does little else but indulge the band’s randomly quirky sense of humor.

Ultimately, I Love You. is an extremely flawed debut with good intentions.

Out of Exile finds Audioslave moving closer to finding their identity as a band; however they still have one or two more albums before they get there.

Brief and enjoyable but never spectacular, Minnesota is the sound of an established and experienced songwriter simply not meeting his substantial potential.

Something special about music is often lost in the space of the recording studio- namely the spontaneity of an artist problem-solving under limited circumstances.

It's uncomplicated, intense, and wearying. Still, it does immensely right by the late, great Jerry Fuchs, who defies the cliche of the 'new wave drum machine' by appearing more like a superstar than he ever has, singlehandedly launching his guys to the top of that pyramid against a blinding golden sun.

I'd be lying if I said this was bad music -- but perhaps worse, the bulk of this album fails to make any unique impression whatsoever.

For all the skill on display here, the album as a whole feels ponderous, weighted down by the more self-important tendencies of classic stoner rock.

Unfortunately, a talented producer doesn't a great album make, as is the case with the shabby Under Construction.

After four albums, it seems like Miniature Tigers are heading towards the crowd and away from the niche they carved for themselves early on.

Three or four listens in, though, and very much against my will it started to become enjoyable as (im)pure sound.

On the one hand, the album does very little of what Tyga’s best at and even when it does, Hotel California makes the strange move of bowing to Tyga’s biting prowess rather than original, ratchet works. On the other, everything here is done perfectly well and enjoyably; unless you’re focused on Tyga’s bars, taking him purely as a presence on some nice beats is not excruciating.

Taken by itself, it has some pretty tracks, as well as some intriguing ones. Yet for the majority of the album I was left wondering what this music was meant to be used for.

The greatest fault of Do You Like Rock Music? is that it is a statement album without a statement, only a response.

Without its context, Beauty Party doesn't make any sense.

Quite a few tracks simultaneously lack subtlety and boldness, reverting to the kind of scatological shock bag you might expect from a third-rate performance artist.

As it stands, this selection of songs did not translate well to the sterile environment of the studio, and, because of that, the final product falls flat on feeling the spirit.

The album's unevenness keeps it from being as good as it could be.

There is a very fine line between contentment and the utter absence of feeling, and while Zebra's production and mix is flawless throughout, it falls too often on the wrong side of that line.

There are embarrassing missteps to be had here, and one wishes that, for this outing, the group just pruned their output back to an EP in length.

You can't simply put strings on next to every song and think that makes you a mature artist.

The downside to all of this newfound strength is that it seems that the Godfrey brothers have painted themselves into a rut with this vocalist. By focusing all of their efforts into playing to her strengths, they have eschewed most of the variety of their earlier work.

There are a few moments on the album that are clearer than the rest.

The Presidents found on These Are the Good Times People are officially lame ducks, serving out their term while rock music elects a new Chief Executive.