Riddled with resentment and lyrics that land with a self-serious thud, Memories is a stunningly drab record. For the most part songs plod along at a strenuously mid-tempo pace, and are mostly lacking in any sonic detail that would reward closer listening.

This Los Angeles party-hop duo can't decide if they want to rhyme like the Beastie Boys or booty-croon like Taio Cruz. So on their second album (which includes the hit "Party Rock Anthem"), they do both, making for a disc of brain-cell-depleting jams.

If you play this album really loud – and leave your brain marinating in formaldehyde on a shelf for a half-hour – it's crudely effective. Play it a second time, and you may want to kill yourself.

Their music is punky, clubby, intensely annoying and other qualities their fans will describe as "fun," but therein lies the band's integrity: They tend to stay out of the middle of the road.

For people who enjoy watching celebrities fall apart, America's Sweetheart should be more fun than an Osbournes marathon.

She's doing the same thing she did last time, except it's not as much fun.

Whatever novelty their sound once had has long since worn off, and the foreboding poetry and constipated howl of Wiccan singer Sully Erna are almost laughable.

Beet, Maize and Corn is way too mellow, sounding something like immaculately crafted retro elevator music.

He delivers overheated poetry like "As history gets lost and as I took that final breath, I felt alive," and his bandmates rock like shiny Satans.

Mostly tepid adult-contemporary black pop. [22 Jan 2004, p.69]

Though Carlton's a better lyricist than faded contemporaries such as Michelle Branch, that fussy piano tends to muscle her out of her own songs.

In the end... The Big Bang feels as hollow as a CGI-fueled Hollywood blockbuster.

It’s hard for a band like STP to change and grow, especially after the losses of two iconic frontmen, so perhaps Perdida will function more like a steppingstone to something greater. But for now, they sound like half the band they used to be.

Lacks any fire whatsoever.

Unfortunately, Haunted reverberates with tired samples, rehashed echo effects and beats so plodding they could stop a metronome.

Much of the time it sounds like Clinic are just playing around with their noisemakers and not having much fun. [2 Sep 2004, p.141]

Producer Medasyn's beats are uneven, and so is Sov's hood-rat humor: weak on what should be a layup college-pub rant, inexplicable on a song about sex with food.

Their [producers Mattman & Robin's] spacious productions are an odd fit for Dan Reynolds' tortured dude-isms.

Rather than a through-line back to the Pumpkins’ trip-hoppy Adore, Cyr often sounds like Corgan was going for a new-wave sound that recalls Talk Talk, and unfortunately he has neither the singular vision he had in the Nineties nor the melodic savvy of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis to pull it off. Instead, most of the songs, all filled with neo-goth romantic lyrics, stumble and fumble over meandering melodies with no sing-along choruses to buttress them.

They sound like a marginally smarter American modern-rock act, screaming their pain over raw-boned riffs that could sure use some technicolor pizazz.

Keith Urban plays it so safe on Defying Gravity, you'd think he got a musical lobotomy when he went to rehab.

It's a self-titled affair but it lacks the calling cards that originally made them interesting.

In a mistaken lunge at maturity, the Cooper Temple Clause devote much of Kick Up the Fire to chilled introspection and black-water ambience.

Die-hard fans will be delighted. Others might yawn.

For the most part, the old magical feeling sure ain't coming back. [2 Nov 2006, p.78]

Birds of Pray, their sixth album, sounds a lot like the previous five.

The likability that helped Allen win last season is so carefully low-key here that it's nearly lost.

Lynch, a man of minor obsessions, here explores just one -- quavery, Fifties-style guitar. The result's long on atmosphere and short on anything approaching mystery.

Most of Solarized sounds like a so-so Portishead record with perfect cheekbones, an expensive haircut and rock-star airheadedness even Noel Gallagher couldn't manage.

Melodrama drags down several cuts, including the absentee-dad lament "Dear Father," and in some form or another, you've heard all these songs before.

The real problem with coffeehouse stuff like "We Could Go and Start Again" isn't that it's corny--it's just tofu-bland. [6 Apr 2006, p.69]