The songs are so generic that the only thing left at the record's conclusion is the feeling of how hollow and insubstantial the whole thing is.

His relentless delivery ensures that words spill out in defiance of the breath required to sustain them. But rate does not guarantee quality, and on Nothing Was the Same, his lyrics are worse than ever.

I’m New Here is a thin affair—musically weak and lyrically narrow.

His most ridiculous and worst album to date.

Young Modern displays a band with the talent to do something new, but without the guts to try.

There are only two or three songs here that seem like they deserve company with Jones’s better work.

His newest album is at best a parody of old Morrissey. He has become boring. He has become stagnant. He has become irrelevant.

The Yeahs’ curiosity ultimately got the better of them, and what we’re left with is an album that bears a lot of attributes with the creature it’s named after: it doesn’t follow a set path, makes a lot of noise in your ears, but its ultimately something you’ll want to swat away and get rid of because of just how badly it annoys you.

Far from being as incisive as Albini or as sonically daring as Kevin Shields, Eagulls have created something akin to comfort food, an album to soothe the fears of guitar nuts afraid that feedback-driven six-string assaults were somehow in danger of going extinct.

Way too much of Bazooka Tooth is purely ego nonsense.

For the most part, I Com sounds like the worst musical mangles of electroclash: the ax-chipped rhythms, the dated blips and bleeps, the distinct sheen of thoughtlessness, and the wry style shot like a flare over the head of substance.

Kesha's willingness to be a little messy with her vocal arrangements make for the strongest moments on the album -- the back and forth on "Cowboy Blues" and "BFF" especially. Sadly, these fleeting moments are not indicative of what High Road is all about. Instead, it's an often infuriating listen, so stubborn in its commitment to cheesy, hunky-dory sentiment that many of its otherwise promising tracks are completely tanked by lyrics that have no appropriate venue.

Life is too short to spend valuable time with a record as essentially inessential as Seven's Travels.

As it stands, this is something that should have stayed in the vaults, largely, and is pretty much only for anyone out there who is a Slim Twig completist.

The idea that these guys from Amherst who made chaotic, inscrutable music are somehow ready for the rock canon seems, in itself, to be the height of pretension.

The rest of the album varies the sonic assault in various ways, while striving to ensure that there are only occasional moments of listenability.

The problem is that too much which follows repeats the same formula with sadly little variation.

For a band once so captivating and mysterious, Smoke Fairies is a colossal step back.

It is difficult to say which is more tedious and painful to listen to, the lyrics or the orchestration.

Yet, it would be too convenient and, frankly, unfair to simply blame the production. These songs, like Moorer's picture in the liner notes, are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Oddly, nothing about This Is for Real feels sincere.

The Kills make the least of their limitations -- rather than magnifying the importance of each choice, the simplicity of the Kills reveals how little thought went into any choice.

Hooks so catchy, voices so belty, organ so loud and . . . organy -- the whole experience overwhelmed my ears and hurt my brain. Listen at your own risk.

In a live setting, this type of give-and-take could pay off, like an electro take on free jazz, but as it's presented here not only is it unspoken, it's unintelligible.

There seems to be little craft in the results; Solex hasn't found much art in her noises.

The tactile experience associated with The Aeroplane Flies High disintegrates when translated to a digital format. A once-prized item becomes empty.

There are classical references, quirky rhythms, and oddball singing as if something serious is happening. But the mix comes off as self-indulgence and childish.

Pink Friday is a real shame, albeit a very well-marketed one, and since it's found its niche, it's no surprise the album was a fair success for Minaj.

At its core, In the Wild lacks any sort of substance.

For this particular moment, though, Oh Fortune reveals that Mangan is still a lightweight.

Thing is, most of the songs on West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, while never outright abhorrent on their own, just aren’t tight enough to keep from being devoured by all the sonic excess.

As an art piece, it can be appreciated. As an album of music that people are supposed to listen to and enjoy over and over and over again (which is what it sounds like the intent really was), not so much. It’s too many notes; for an album that purports to be so propulsive, it really needs to lighten up.

Even as Lambs Anger rides the wave of ‘80s nostalgia to respectable income and momentarily elevated social status, long-time fans will scratch their heads and pine for the old days, and they are right to do so.

When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold is almost entirely forgettable.

The Ghost Inside do little to variate on the established metalcore sonic, even though they play that sonic well.

Dark Light Daybreak reaches for territory that LeMaster simply is not ready for, and which is unsuited for the songwriting strength he possesses.

A bloated misfire.

It's pretty much what you'd expect from the diva -- cheesy, danceable and largely forgettable.

Perfectamundo is essentially tepid blues rock (featuring many warmed over standards) with a Latin rhythm section slapped on for some longed for but unrequited funk credibility.

What's most shocking is the number of forgettable tracks, something Merritt typically manages to avoid.

At its best, Coming on Strong sounds like a lukewarm Postal Service, and at its worst it sounds like Goldie Lookin' Chain.

It's hard to see how The Promise could achieve some sort of musical relevancy.

Kintsugi is the sound of a group resting on its laurels.

Despite whatever success they may have had with their debut, The Darkness' return clearly signifies that the major problems underlying their style have come to the forefront, leaving the cheeky humor and catchy riffs that we all liked not too long ago in the dust.

The Element of Freedom is just really well-made elevator music. It's boring, soulless, and pretentious.

Outside of “Flight” and “Breath Out” all of the good moments are quickly washed out by waves upon waves of utter slog.

On a front to back listen, you've got to wade through the waste before something remotely worthwhile turns up.

It's just one long drag.

American Supreme accomplishes little more than tarnishing their chrome-plated punk and sending it on a winding downward spiral.

If the whole album had the strength of the final track, I would be seriously pleased. But it does not. Rather, Manic Expressive as a whole sounds like a failed attempt at a) minimalism, b) ambient, and c) IDM.

It goes awry for Black Mountain, devolving into a collection of musical segments that prove that the members have really important record collections and strong political views. The crucial thing that is missing is internal inspiration.

Espinoza opts for cheap sentiment beneath layers of grandiose atmospherics.

'N Sync's latest offering of threadbare cookie crunch...

At 37 minutes, it feels too short to be epic, at least on the level that Serena-Maneesh is shooting for. It also lacks catchy, listenable songs.

As a concept album, Strange Little Girls fails. As a collection of cover tunes, it infuriates and nauseates.

Next to his material, In the Grace of Your Love sounds as forgettable as the dozens of nameless bands who came in Echoes's wake. The Rapture could still regroup on their next record, but it's difficult to see where they'd go from here.

Through the Green just drags on and on.

Battle Born is a confused mess of an album, drenched in influences but positively overextended in its execution, the band trying way too hard to do something grander and more complex than what they've done before.

Most artists, though, recognize the necessity to steal creatively, combining unlikely influences to make something close to novel. Greta Van Fleet, though, seem to lack even a passing familiarity with the last four decades of recorded music. Despite all the talk of artistic growth, the band have really only moved on from I to IV.

Contrived, sterile garbage.

The Hella boys have immeasurable talent, as proven by their past (and better) releases; unfortunately, Church Gone Wild/Chirpin Hard has nothing but complete disregard and contempt for talent.

The idiosyncratic intellectualism, the schrapnels of noise, and the outlandish creative liberties are still there, but without the funk these elements are uncomfortably exposed, like a naked body standing shivering in the cold.

Sam’s Town is so riddled with hackneyed clichés, pandering melodrama, and lazy songwriting, that we keep wondering just what gimmick Flowers will thrust upon us next in a desperate effort to hold our attention.

A colossal disappointment. Tenacious D's album number three fails to capture the comic energy of the band's prior musical output and pales in comparison to other, much funnier rock music moments by the band's contemporaries.

It's sure to sell on brand recognition alone, but I doubt a series of mannered and soulless hooks are going to find much life outside of the European remix circuit.

Saves the Day have given their fans nothing exciting, innovative, or new.

Unless you're a die-hard fan of Bozulich's impressive and vast body of work, or like your "music" to be as willfully oblique as possible, In Animal Tongue is the type of record where you can save some precious coin by taking a pass on it.

Vultures is best left lying alone amongst its metal clichés and turgid song-writing.

These are easy, derivative songs that might be listenable if they weren’t so overladen with noise.

The problem with this rather chugga-chugga, one-speed record is that he doesn’t persuade you that he feels sufficiently strongly to let it all hang out on record.

So as things go along, the similar, recycled beats meld into one another with little to distinguish them.

Version is proof that you can’t just slap a bunch of horns and old-time R&B beats on rock songs and turn them into soul songs.

Where Wildflower fails is in almost everything.

Where surprises could be found with each previous release to give even casual fans something to appreciate, Only by the Night delivers an even serving of Ritalin coma stadium rock destined to raise their prime age demographic.

In all honesty, the album’s listenability has not improved with age. There are 34 songs on this new version of Document and Eyewitness and, even if a number of the live tracks clock in at less than two minutes, the sheer relentlessness of the freeform, out-of-tune, semi-suicide mission wears you down by the time you are only halfway through.

For all its tempo shifts and attempts at fun, Gemini sounds like the work of an ascetic band scared of pleasure.

It is neither new nor interesting nor intelligent nor even at a bare minimum fun.

The Cross of My Calling just sounds like an unfinished assignment.

For folks who love Cee-Lo as a television personality and/or demand new renditions of songs we've all heard thousands of times over, Cee-Lo's Magic Moment exists. For everyone else... well, there's probably copies of Cee-Lo Green…Is the Soul Machine lying around somewhere out there.

The first and possibly most damaging problem lies in the music, which lacks the focus, coherence, and development to be rewarding beyond a novelty listen.

Quality Street Music serves as a vehicle for Drama to shine a light on some artists you may not have payed much attention to before while embarrassing and making caricatures of others, resulting in an unbalanced effort that reeks of songs constructed through emails and mix-and-matching rather than any real chemistry.

His insistence on teasing us with a good line and immediately pulling away to something else, without even a rhyme as an excuse, is simply frustrating.

Brimming with half formed ideas and floundering melodies, Too Much Information is easily one of the most uninspired albums released so far in 2014.

After an hour and change of mind-numbing, ponderous songs, the thought of ever committing to one of their records again is equivalent to volunteering for Chinese water torture.

Caught up in the importance of her themes, she loses sight of her music's ability to convey them.

In attempting to make a record that avoids the pop fluff he’s become famous for, Jones almost completely rids Pray IV Reign of the redeemable moments from past releases.

For all of Wolf’s bravery in putting his broken heart on public display, on Jet Lag it is, sadly, only the banality that winds up being contagious for the listener.

For the discerning music listener, JackInABox is only bound to be a disappointment at best, and annoying at worst.

Do Things, unsurprisingly, ends on a run of unimaginative songs that make it increasingly difficult to want to keep listening to it. It's an unfortunate album that will no doubt pander to a certain group of people but will likely leave everyone else cold. There's nothing here apart from the lead-off track that's worth a repeat listen.

It’s just too generic to get you reaching for your red cardigan and for your journal under the pillow.

It's all very clockwork.

Here, every piece of music not connected to the human voice is diluted to a nearly unrecognizable form.

For a record whose lyrics are meant to reflect a deeply personal music journey, the music finds Coldplay at the safest and most rote it has ever been.

Courage and Confidence exhibits practically all of the possible flaws of cover records, and virtually none of the potential pluses.

Overall, the album will be a pleasant sleeping album for casual ambient fans, but connoisseurs of the genre best look elsewhere for their fix.

These are the cheaply licensed other songs that you fast-forwarded through on that copy of Dance Mix [Insert Year] to get to the two or three hits that really shook up the club. You skipped them then and you should skip them now too.

The problem is, it’s easy to lose the lyrics when the music gives us no reason to listen to them.

Reid’s creative phrasing and pulse games are, as always, a fascinating contrast to the rigid rhythmic grids typical of Four Tet constructions, but on NYC the pair doesn’t seem to find a happy middle ground anywhere.