The results are usually catchy and interesting.

There are big, well-crafted hooks on the Oasis-y "The Mansion" and the melancholy slow-burner "Indentions," though they're often stuck in clunky arrangements and muddy self-production.

The Lips have always been able to subvert pie-eyed whimsy with a sense of homespun beauty, and there's plenty of that here too.

Hansard too often lapses into his trademark brooding melodrama--an easy fallback for a singer who's at his best, nowadays, when he's trying something new.

As mild as the music might often sound, this is an album that cuts deep.

Teenage Dream is the kind of pool-party-pop gem that Gwen Stefani used to crank out on the regular, full of SoCal ambience and disco beats.

The duo are most engaging when they keep at least one foot on the dancefloor. Elsewhere, their interest in after-hours vibes can rob their music of its forward motion.

The second Fifth Harmony LP isn't a massive step forward, but with a constant bombardment of hooks, high energy and incredible harmony there's not much time to catch your breath to compare.

The album was inspired by world travel, but it has a pleasantly isolated feel: a portable home, conjured between headphones.

Haines' singing is sharp but worry-worn.

Clarkson remains a slightly wearying one-note artist--she's a wounded lover, bellowing her pain and scorching the earth. But wow--that voice.

Shock Value doesn't feel as random and indistinct as many albums by producers using all-star lineups do. [19 Apr 2007, p.62]

This album is Carrabba's rather reasonable pop petition to be dealt back into a game he started.

His finest songs are always his romantic ballads, and the best one here also sounds like the one he wrote the quickest.

There are missed opportunities--the She & Him track is slight, and a rumored Frank Ocean team-up is sadly absent--and a few too many retreads (the "Sloop John B"-ish "Sail Away"), although the harmonies do sound grand with Al Jardine and other Beach Boys teammates on board.

There are too many humdrum love ballads.

Evokes the singer-songwriter atmospherics of Carole King and Elton John. [24 Jun 2004, p.170]

Some tracks, like "Got My Mojo Working" (a vocal duet with Shemekia Copeland), smolder without catching fire. Others, like a drum-looped "Mannish Boy," spark by breaking tradition. All testify to the eternal flame of a master--the original rollin' stone.

Rateliff hasn't completely forgotten his folkie past: The wistful "Wasting Time" shows that he can still kill you softly.

Producer Markus Dravs (Coldplay, Mumford & Sons) does an admirable job of translating Followill's signature slurred delivery and the band's muscular jangle into thicker arrangements, though the result can feel generic.

Things don’t always gel--Marcus Mumford and Miguel turn in half-baked Zooropa moves on “Find Another Way,” and “Where It’s At Ain’t What It Is,” with fellow guitar master Gary Clark Jr. and producer Nico Stadi, feels like too many cooks in the kitchen. But when Atlas Underground works, it upgrades the RATM game plan with motivational anthems for a newly-fucked world order.

At 69, Seger is just as ruggedly introspective as he was in his heavy-bearded Seventies.

If you're a Rush fan, add two stars; if not, subtract two.

Stevens is best balancing his composer side with his singer-songwriter side on songs like "Arnika," which packs all that avant-Andrew Lloyd Webber ambition into soft, simple benedictions for bedroom-size cathedrals.

Eighties pop shine cut with pedal steel/fiddle poetry, Texas swing, cantina blues and achingly-crooned nostalgia that generally doesn’t feel hard sell, even when things gets treacly. Which of course, they do.

Banks... raps each verse as if his entire career depends on it. [5 Aug 2004, p.113]

Some more uptempos would have been nice, but Seventh Tree still makes for good post-party chill- out music.

The trio shape folk, gospel and blues influences into straight-ahead roots rock somewhere between the Lumineers and Lady Antebellum.