Black Sheep Boy has bold ambitions, but Okkervil River hasn’t quite reached the point where polished execution equals or surpasses preliminary concept.

Sadly, Tanglewood Numbers just doesn’t sport enough memorable Bermanisms to make it a truly satisfying Silver Jews album.

The Beatles don't meet Jay-Z as equals; they're sliced and diced, the innate musicality of their work all but compromised into nothingness, into vaguely familiar square pegs crammed into the comparatively round holes of Jay-Z's original vocals.

Feels stuck in a holding pattern.... A misfire from a talented band.

As tough a slog as the backend of Part 1 is, it's Part 2 that truly reveals just how rushed, haphazard and ill-formed Adams' stab at morose mope-rock is.

The back end of the album trundles along, failing to rival the opening energy or offer anything as interesting as the non-anthemic detours.

As with Carrabba's earlier work, though, the problem with A Mark is the utter lack of personalized context in which his heart-on-your-sleeve songs operate.

While the results aren’t exactly groundbreaking, they're undeniably loose, spirited and just plain fun.

At times, Callahan's penchant for clever phrasings gets the better of him.

With all due respect to Mr. Albini, perhaps it’s time Nastasia broadened her collaborative horizons.

Despite obvious talent and wit, it fails to leave more than a marginal impression.

When he strikes the right balance of mischievous charm, rapid-fire wit and genial bravado, Ludacris proves why he's at the top of his game. But Chicken -N- Beer too often flashes us threatening glimpses of a less-likable persona behind that avuncular veneer.

Now, this wouldn't seem so bad, or filler-friendly, if !!! offered an advancement on "Giuliani." Alas, no.

Much of The Cure slogs along at the same churning, monotonous pace, and Smith, rambling in a croak-shout variation of his normal singing voice, does the material few favors.

The songs comprising both parts of Love Is Hell constitute the worst songwriting by Adams ever stamped with a price tag.

That's the problem with Skull Ring: It's the work of an artist who should be looking within himself to create a modern-may masterpiece, rather than trying to catch a spark from either his chart-topping successors or the band he once fronted so triumphantly. Both acts, in their way, give a whiff of desperation.

This stylistic-tryout grab-bag exposes a quartet that has yet to find a voice solely its own.

Space-rock aficionados will dig the zero-G atmosphere, but it meanders through excessive pockets better left unexplored.

The most frustrating aspect of Idlewild is its lack of energy.

Even by the standards of Black's previous Catholics and solo offerings, Show Me Your Tears is a disappointment.

To the 5 Boroughs is continuously distracted from its titular dedication by political concerns, severely dampening not only its replay factor but also proving to be the least fun album the normally surefire trio has made.

How We Operate earns points for stylistic adventurousness but, unlike In Our Gun, doesn’t meet its self-imposed challenge with the strongest batch of tunes.

Barring a few notable exceptions, these are the songs that either weren’t good enough or didn’t fit into any of the New Jersey-based group’s proper releases.

Where Teaches was brash, Fatherfucker is dim; where Teaches was shocking in its gender-bending, sexually charged language, Fatherfucker is bland, repetitive and obvious in its attempts to turn standard conventions upside down.

It's difficult to listen to the album without coming away with the impression that it should really be two different records. Casablancas' disaffected monotone increasingly seems to belong on a different record from the assured sounds of a band slowly feeling its way out of its pigeonhole.

Cold Roses’ first set is by-the-numbers, brokenhearted MOR fare, sometimes maudlin (“When Will You Come Back Home?”), infrequently dramatic (the piano-driven “How Do You Keep Love Alive”) and mostly forgettable. The second disc redeems Cold Roses from an even-less-enthusiastic recommendation.

A grab-bag assemblage that simply doesn’t flow together very well.

Lacking its predecessor's edgy tone, Life For Rent offers up one bland, polite tune after another.