It's a boring album, it's a depressing album, but it's also a deeply cynical album.

Some of it works--'Southern California' 's honey-harmony’d and piano-led wistful look at the history of the Beach Boys in specific and SoCal in general is rather touching. But the rest of the album, especially the overwrought spoken-word interludes, remains a series of harmonized thuds and (however pretty) blank-eyed lobotomy-pop.

There's too many synths, too many hooks, and just too much happening for us to enjoy it. The charm is gone, and we're left with a mess too muddy to understand.

It seems to me that this album has already been made countless times by countless bands.

For those who never liked That Guy Who Plays Acoustic Guitar At The Party, Babel's gonna sound like the dentist's drill. For others, this still may be the point at which you put down your makeshift tambourine, get up from the half-circle and find a better room in the party house.

What we get is a self-indulgent and silly album that never makes any lasting impression.

Songs that range from energetic, immature guitar hacking (“Dispenser”) to tedious slow-churners (“Icebreakers”) to just plain awfulness (“I Thought There’d Be More Than This,” “The Knowledgeable Hasbeens”).

While the slog through the mostly interchangeable mid-tempo, spoken-verse tracks on the first twenty two minutes of the album is a lot of saminess to deal with, a couple genuine pleasures await anyone patient enough to make it through to the album's final moments.

With Fight Softly they seem so out of sync, so bland and so disappointing.

There’s nothing wrong with a band being crass. But when that band tries to act like they’re doing it in order to make a vague, nonsensical statement on twenty-first century love and sex, the result is albums like Reality Check.

This isn’t some lost early album that is as good as the new stuff; Campfire Songs might be the weakest entry in Animal Collective’s catalog. The album is the aural document of a young band blowing 45 minutes on a porch and hoping in vain for some kind of transcendent musical revelation.

Ounsworth's impassioned delivery is gone throughout most of Some Loud Thunder, replaced by what can only be described as vague indifference.

It's sad to see a band that touts itself as experimental sounding like a watered-down, unfocused version of its younger self.

The majority of its ten tracks resemble either retreads of their former glories or listless attempts at Spotify-friendly R&B which rob them of any identity whatsoever.

Closing In consists of amateurish approximations of the music the duo wishes it were playing.

Idlewild has become predictable and boring.

Nothing sticks. The only times you’ll be tempted to rewind is when Jones says something stupid, which is often.

Her effort is continuously admirable, but what is frustrating about The Beekeeper is the music itself: it’s almost formulaic, including even the token song that displays a powerful sense of womanhood.

Sometimes it's hard to take seriously a band that bases its identity on a shtick -- but it doesn't seem like the members of the Dresden Dolls are much interested in being taken seriously.

The thickset blues-rock of Havilah, the fifth studio album from the Drones, makes for opaque and impenetrable listening.

The songs are imitative and lackluster.

Instead of copying the aesthetic of 1970s rock ‘n’ roll, they’ve copied some of last year’s more popular indie records. The result, though at times satisfying, mostly feels contrived.

Dead Drunk sounds six billion times better in concept than in execution.

Largely forgettable.

Though comparisons to the Postal Service and M83’s newer work are somewhat understandable, the record lacks emotion in a way that makes it better suited for a Volvo commercial or a Starbucks compilation.

A majority of the tracks lack in everything but production value.

Turns out Isaac Brock is just too damn weird to be imitable.