So Grinning Streak is listenable throughout, but aside from those occasional highlights, it’s not a compelling listen.

There's something positively stagnant sounding about Quebec.

There are some new moves here, but they tend to feel half-baked, under-exploited or, in the case of Kendrick Lamar’s appearance on “Let Us Move On”, just a bit hackneyed.

When it comes down to it, these tracks really aren't that bad, but it's hard not to have the echoes of savvier songwriting in your head when listening to a group like Trail of Dead, whose history has shown them to be more sophisticated musicians than the ones present on Lost Songs.

If Honeycomb exercises Dylanisms, they're the indulgent kind: stifled melodic repetitions, gaggles of verses, rushed takes that make brilliant musicians appear barely competent.

An album that lacks its own distinctive voice.

Odd sonic and thematic tonal choices plague the album.

I really don't want to play the game of Name That Influence, but the Stands trot their heroes before your ears so consistently that it's hard not too.

On the whole, Lostprophets seem a bit lost on this average at best offering.

As bad as The Silver Lining is, a knee-jerk reaction would obscure some redeeming moments.

This album seems determined to take all the good things Stewart and co. are capable of and tossing them right out the window.

It is difficult, even after repeated listenings to find something that breaks out of the formula. The only truly embarrassing moment on the album is the title track.

While it's impossible to truly define what makes LP1 so frustrating, it's safe to say that through all the angry growls and snoozy pop melodies that color the album, believing is Joss Stone becomes increasingly difficult each time these songs are played.

The CD is not all bad, and it's certainly not the complete disaster some critics want it to be.

You just don’t get a sense of the depth and variety of the history Zomby is trying to encapsulate. Also, much of With Love‘s second half is made up of loping, rather dull dub and dubstep.

[A] lackluster High Hopes.

Heartfelt? Yes. But who would have ever thought Eric Clapton's music could become so disposable?

An album that is pretty, stream-lined, and much too often dull.

Instead of the traditional bluesman, we're given the much less exciting elder statesman. Instead of worrying about his soul, his next drink, or his next lay, Clapton sounds like he's wondering if his Lexus is parked in an okay area.

They’re not lyrically great by any stretch of the imagination, but they could be a lot better, as their debut album shows.

The last four tracks (which are remixes of old As I Lay Dying songs) on this compilation album are unnecessary, for the electronic and overly-beaty sound of synths and drum machines sound jarring combined with metal-core breakdowns, death growls, and clean singing.

No amount of time with the disc, however, will make The Mirror Explodes any less impenetrable. Apparently, Hecksher just likes his music noisy, druggy and slow. And that doesn’t make for a listening experience any more compelling than it sounds.

Silence is easy, and apparently being boring is, too.

It's not all bad, of course-if you prefer your sugar with a side of C-rate bounce, there are things here with which you most certainly could spend your Saturday nights.

Beneath its peacock plumage, preening, posturing and ‘performance’ there lies too little imagination.

Coming from an artist as singular as Klein, Reasons to Live fails in one very frustrating way: it sounds like the kind of record that anyone could have made.

The Crying Light is a record that effectively changes Antony’s character and makes him a difficult entity to relate to, forcing him more into the realm of animatronics than human existence.

The electricity that defined T.I.'s early career-dexterous lyricism molded effortlessly to trap rap essentials -- feels further away than ever before.

This Dashboard has rock hooks and not much real emotion. This Dashboard is devoid of the only thing that actually made the band good: sincere heartbreak.

Laws of Illusion is certainly not as arresting or as bold as some of the early highlights of her career.

As much as the album’s production seems to (want to) suggest Bugg’s artistic growth, the songs, when you pick them apart, don’t show much in the way of maturation.

Part of me likes that the Datsuns are 100% serious about doing their own thing, regardless of what the scene demands, but when their "thing" amounts to a heap of riffs leftover from the Carter administration, I can't get that excited.

BE starts with a bang but ends with a whimper.

The main reason it's so hard to embrace such likeable music is that it's blatantly transparent.

Chances are that if you weren't too hot on Lou's shift from electro to acoustic over the course of her three-LP solo trajectory, your best bet would be stick to your faithful copy of "Fear Of Fours" and remember the good times.

It’s just typical Budden atop typical Top 40 (other than “Ghetto Burbs”, which could’ve been a Lil’ Cease epic in 1999) and that’s not a formula that makes for anything memorable.

Whilst there are flashes of the burning ambitions of yore too much here is bland, formulaic and depressingly dull.

For all the talk that's bound to come up over the album's production, Port of Morrow's problem isn't 't have a whole lot at stake.

These lads from Leeds clearly realize their business model needs tweaking, though it's their songbook that benefit most from an about-face. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

It isn't that Splinter is such a bad disc per se, but more so that it is incredibly unsatisfying.

Metal is supposed to be larger than life, especially in Slipknot’s case, and on this record, their attempt to sound more musically varied has them coming off as tired, apathetic, and above all, weak.

Alas, the band only hits this sweet spot a few other times on Maximum Overload.

Usually when a band reforms, fans hope it's because the group has something to say with its new release. Unfortunately, Blood Like Lemonade, has little to say to even Morcheeba's most dedicated fans.

Imploding the Mirage promises dynamite rock 'n' roll yet delivers tepid synthpop. Whereas the album marginally reinvents the Killers' sound, the lyrics problematically redesign archaic ideology.

The returns are decidedly mixed. Some listeners may get a satisfying-enough taste of what they loved about the first LP, while others will likely be disappointed and maybe even a little puzzled by a familiar favorite made uncanny.

The songs themselves don’t hold up under casual inspection, let alone eager scrutiny.

While the monster-sized guest spots and lyrics about larger-than-life luxury were intended to give the album an international flavour, the result is merely one of boring homogeneity.

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.

The basic problem with A Hyperactive Workout for the Flying Squad is that it has a tendency to fuzz that fine line between inspiration and imitation.

"We live in a time bomb that's ticking down" begins the lead single... If they keep producing music like this, their time bomb may blow up in their faces soon enough.

The legendary foursome sounds as if they’re merely going through the motions.

It feels of the moment in that it borrows from very recent pop trends without adding much new.

Antenna is lacking in every sonic department they previously thrived upon and sounds exactly what fans of old feared: immaculate, sterile guitar production; rigid, radio-ready song structures; and an end to the dynamic, cosmos-exploring sound that elevated Jupiter to a stunning success.

The major misstep on Free Your Mind is eschewing those decent lyrical impulses in favor of rather limp and unaccomplished (and repeated!) inanities such as “free your mind” and “shine on,” phrases that should be confined, respectively, to the lexicons of aging hippies and Roger Waters.

Noah and the Whale have yet to find their way. Maybe by album number four, they will cease emulating and start evoking.

These songs are ethereal to a fault, unable to gain a foothold in memory. If Portico continue down this path, they’re liable to become faceless where they were once exhilarating.

Praxis’ songs are too closely tied to their subject to work outside of the album in any notable context, which leaves us with the album itself--a confused mess of synth noodlings and half-formed ideas.

However different the early and mid-period records are, they all sounded daring, fresh, and inspired in their own ways. Compare that to the lifeless "High Speed Train" which plods along in perfectly measured time for the longest five minutes I've ever experienced with the band.

What’s most frustrating about The Mountain Will Fall is how amateur the whole thing sounds.

This feels like music for people who honestly and unironically look up to people like Paris Hilton or the Kardashians.

It's not without its bright spots, yet it reaches dramatically but clumsily for the diversity and freshness of the first album, and comes up short.

The idea of "wounded optimism" applies to Sugar as a whole, at least from a listener's perspective. There's just enough good material here to believe that the problems with the record represent a temporary misstep, or a flawed approach, rather than a fundamental change in the band.

The whole effort, a mere 33 minutes worth but seemingly longer, is disappointing, save one or two songs. Multiple spins just can't save this one.

Tere are no sultry Organized Noize beats, no effortless Sleepy Brown hooks, no ferocious Raekwon verses—just an endless stream of abysmally written, Auto Tune-drenched nothings.

At its best, Is the Is Are is a fine album with plenty of immediate pleasures to offer. However, digging deeper won’t unveil anything really tangible.

The Coathangers bring some good punk sensibility to the table but the majority of these tracks lack the velocity that would bring them into moshable territory.

Personally, I wouldn’t be that interested in going back to Is And Always Was (what’s in a title?) again. For devout followers, not new converts.

The Battle for Everything is an occasionally interesting record, but the sheer pretension of Ondrasik's lyrics coupled with his penchant for self-seriousness tend to suck much of the fun out of what could have been an enjoyably middle-of-the-road adult alternative album.

Since the band plays it so safe on this record, it makes the stories they are telling sound emotionless.

Ultimately, this smoke-and-mirrors approach will not do. The smoke is too smoky, the mirrors too reflective of too much else out there at the moment.

The candied pop that characterized much of the Pumpkins later work is still out in full force.

Barragán is not overtly accessible--it does take a few listens to warm up to it--but it’s so all over the map and light that it just feels like a palate cleansing exercise.

A flat, underdeveloped vibe prevails.

In an apparent attempt to open up his appeal to broader audiences, Schnauss leaves his compositions seeming oddly detoothed.

Special is such a disappointment because you can hear the better album she’s capable of – but she insists on digging her heels in to crank out one-size-fits-all empowerment jams that can’t be resonating with anyone beyond someone just getting back to the elliptical for the first time in a year.

You could call it "rock on autopilot". It would be a good description. If you asked some space creatures to create an album of banal Earthling arena rock, they might very well create In the Dark using a tentacleful of the simplest mathematical algorithms.

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.

If Never Let Me Go at least finds a musical footing, what really dooms it is the songwriting—or lack thereof. Molko uses the same stilted, broken phrasing in too many songs as if he is pausing mid-verse to try and think up a vocal hook.

MNDR's debut full-length, Feed Me Diamonds, is filled with choruses of "ooh whoa oohs" and other shots at those easy hooks that you can't stop whistling. But the material doesn't connect with the proper force.

This turns out to be the overall style of the album--inaccessible at the best of times but somehow appealing on follow-up listens, if only for the crystal clear production.

Their instrumentation is not potent enough to overwhelm their poor lyrics, and their lead singer hasn't figured out how to use his voice in a way that moves masses.

Unlike other emo bands, Youth Group is blessed with a singer who can sing and a talented team of players which makes them slightly harder to write off. But only slightly, because the final straw [is] their lyrics.

Perry is most enjoyable when her songs are simple and senseless. Profundity is just way too problematic.

The Sounds, sadly, are fatally pledged to sincerity in its most ponderous and uninspired form.

I’m increasingly unsure what its audience is looking for, but being that this album seems to rely so heavily on great hooks and attractive beats to sell Snoop’s tired, been-there-done-that raps, I can’t imagine this being a truly satisfying release for most listeners.

This is Forever simply cannot get past its own self-imposed lack of evolution.

The sound of a middle-aged shock rocker long past his creative, controversial, and commercial peak trying to drag his the ball-and-chain of his career along as he trudges over the hill. Sadly, it's all rather predictable.

It doesn't sound like most of his recent material, and while the rejection of familiar sounds and textures alone is never a good reason to dismiss an album, the new sounds that he utilizes here are neither very new or very good.

This self-titled sounds like Korn trying to play watered-down nu-Korn, or Nine Inch Nails, or, if such prestigious tie-ins really do exist here, it's in such a heavy-handed and amateurish way that the former artists would probably run a mile from it.

Walk Off the Earth sound too derivative for their own good and the few spots of light here and there (“Speeches” which carries a surprisingly good horn section and “Summer Vibe” which, while as generic a summer reggae song as you could imagine, is the one moment where the band sound relaxed) aren’t enough to save the album from mediocrity.

And Everything Else... truly disappoints not in its lack of perfection (that would have been a bit much to ask for) but rather because too much of it could have been made by Anyone.

The more you dive into these strange Dreams, the more it’s obvious that after trying to stylistically copy various groups on Ghost Stories, here they’re outright ripping them off.

Willett pledges his love in the face of obstacles in the same way that the guitars get loud in a Nickelback song. It passes for emotion in the absence of anything spontaneous or unrehearsed.

There’s a fine line between dreamy and sleepy, and too often, Dog Bite falls on the wrong side of that divide.

Beware only sounds like loose, organic country, when really it proves just another contrived piece to the Bonnie “Prince” Billy brand.

Fans of psychedelic soirees ala early Syd Barrett-led Pink Floyd will likely find satisfaction. As for everyone else, well, suffice it to say, drugs of another sort may indeed be needed.

Sounds for the most part weak and tired.

He has some solid ideas and keen sense of production; the problem is that his solo songs, by and large, suffer from a frightening lack of creativity and a remarkably shallow lyrical outlook.