It essentially exposes Doherty’s biggest weaknesses: his trite lyrics, his less than perfect voice, and his inability to sound interested in anything he’s doing not under the title "Libertines."

The lyrics are especially vapid here in the Stadium Arcadium.

Most of these songs are only pleasant for thirty seconds or so.

Ahead of the Lions is pure press-a-button-out-comes-album radio pap.

Having blown out and polished away all of the music's industrial grit, Eisold reveals himself to be little more than a meticulously researched, clinical New Order cover act.

"Cartoon Motion" was a nice moment for Mika, but this second album does not improve or advance what he did before. In fact, he seems to have regressed through his venture into childhood on The Boy Who Knew Too Much.

The album has a consistent lack of meaning and genuine feeling.

Sweet Christ, in no universe will Big Sean be greater than Notorious B.I.G. or Big Pun, and at the rate he's going he'll be lucky to end up a better rapper than Sean Combs, let alone Sean Carter.

Dylanesque is a mess. Nearly every album has a few bright spots, but this is a lazy collection of covers that offers no insight into the catalog of one of the twentieth century's foremost songwriters.

Origin is a saccharin mouthful of bloated riffs, burdensome lyrical clichés, and second-rate studio trickery -- songs that lurch rather than rock. In other words, it’s Oasis at their best or the Doves at their absolute worst.

Sleepy, sporadic and inconsistent.

Rather than mature effectively, Electric Six has pretty much reached the end; at this point, the band is just cashing out.

As with all covers records, the crucial issue is whether these renditions bring anything new to these songs. The answer is a resounding no.

Call And Response is an interesting (and by “interesting” I mean “awful”) remix album due to the fact that no one seems to want to mess with the originals for fear of alienating anyone or veering off from the song’s original composition (likely for the sake of the commercial prospects of the album).

Even if it came out in 1996, it would still be self-absorbed, turgid, over-produced and soulless.

If Red Album’s songs were formulaic, shiny, and easily digestible like everything on Green or Maladroit, the vacuity of the new songs wouldn't be as big a problem. But 'Heart Songs,' 'Thought I Knew'--these are just plain bad.

The album is a stunningly lackluster, impersonal anti-work.

Thrilling prospect though it may be, the result is a disaster.

The twelve songs here drip with coatings of sentiment and sparkly instrumentation that are saccharine and plastic.

Weak and vanilla.

They seem to have packed up that cleverness with their Scotchgard bongs and headed straight for the wishy-washy world of adult contemporary without even knowing it.

This album will sway neither the faithful nor the unbelievers from their positions along the borders of her stalled momentum.

Despite all the stupid records he's put out before, The Return of Dr. Octagon is the first one that plunges wholly into self-parody. He's now a fully realized clown, a prop, a joke and, most disappointingly, a sub-par rapper whose forced ideas and personality obstacles have devolved into flimsy, uninspired character sketches.

It’s disappointing that a duo this good on paper could be responsible for an album as uninspired as A.M. Even the album’s better songs (the piano-led 'And I Wonder' and the sauntering 'The Wrong Turning') are limp and tedious at best.

Comparing his remarkable contributions to Deerhoof with this boring, nondescript effort suggests that Cohen should open his studio doors and welcome collaborators.

It doesn’t challenge listeners or give them anything unexpected or even asked for, really (who's waiting around with bated breath for 'Ring-A-Ling?'), but it’s already a certifiable hit.

By trying to define they’re own specific legacy, they’re actually ramming it down their listener's throats, and daring the music world to question them.

In the end, Calling the World left me bored as hell.