The eleven tracks on the album, while almost uniformly unpleasant, all share an underlying moroseness sewn together by Bianca Casady’s unnerving vocals.

The end result is 40 minutes of music that drain the listener’s energy and will.

This is a mess of an indie pop album, filled to the brim with ambient interludes and a taste for unnecessary drum machines, but a mess that longs to make sense of itself.

Almost nothing about it works.

The real embarrassment is that more than the work of his peers or his idols, mostly Pharrell’s just ripping off himself to seriously diminished returns.

This LP is as sterilized and recycled as the pop gunk that the band profess to loathe.

Though the revamps are distractingly overwrought (this project could have been called The 20/20 Xperience), Jackson’s voice, pure and fierce as ever, cuts straight through Timbaland and company’s more-is-more fireworks display.

Instead of utilizing the talented crew’s many particular strengths to create a unique and unified sound, The Fool comes out feeling like nobody in particular and everyone at once.

The generalized lyrics shrouded in reverb protect Richie by rendering anything he sings as essentially useless.

There’s a lack of personal narrative or identity on Rodeo, and Scott will often overcompensate for the hollowness of his music.

There’s nothing even remotely inventive here.

Frustratingly, a few of the songs on Eclipse really do hit that arena-pop bullseye, but stacked alongside so many other songs mining the same territory, they become irritating by association.

Largely embarrassing, Bangerz is the most fun when it’s so ridiculous that criticism seems futile.

A hodgepodge of bland, rehashed, vanilla indie-rock, scarred by woefully inept lyrics, and completely lacking any of the infectious melodies and choruses that bolstered their debut.

Education only teaches us that the band was at it’s best when they were merely predicting a riot instead of trying to lead one.

Ultimately, the highlights here are still middling fare, and mostly, I just couldn’t wait for Recess to be over.

Trainor recycles the themes from every forgettable Billboard alumnus from the past decade, with a bit more color here and there, but not enough to distinguish herself from the pack.

The one redeeming quality behind this whole project is Cyrus’ twangy voice, which saves this project from being entirely pointless. In her lower registers, Cyrus draws you into her husk and warmth. It is in these moments she reveals the traces of an artist who otherwise remains absent from this album.

A couple of pseudo-anthems will likely nurse them through a handful of unearned headline gigs--but in all honesty, the world has no need for pop music this faceless, listless or sterile.

The New Classic, though stacked from top to bottom with an impressive collection of production efforts, is nothing more than derivative delivery soaked in stylistic heresy.

Wilder Mind, airless to the extreme, plods on, song after saccharine song. Melodies do abound. But they’re wearying, like the mundane hell of children’s tunes, blasted on repeat, throughout a long car trip.