If the whole record could be as good as the first ten seconds of "Artificial Light", it would be great. But it isn't.

Your senses will be sorely disappointed.

The low points are easier to spot than the highs, which tend to peak at a low elevation.

Dangerous Dreams' late arrival was nearly enough to doom it to obscurity, but the disc's lack of new ideas puts the final nail in the coffin.

Awake is a distinctly flawed album; much of what's here is precious or forced-sounding.

Gomez do nothing to rethink or reinvigorate their earlier recordings; in fact, when Out West's renditions are compared to the originals, the live versions sound dull and lifeless.

You have to admire Hefner's artistic spirit -- but Dead Media is too flawed and derivative to earn serious praise.

Songs too slow to dance to and too annoyingly repetitive for passive listening.

While a few of the songs -- like BMG's team-up with Esthero for a cover of "White Rabbit" -- may generate momentary interest, they all sound a little too much like commercial radio fodder, their quirks depressingly predictable.

The absence of memorable hooks and catchy choruses is obvious.

There are times on this record, though, when the quaver fades for a few notes and [Oberst's] voice drops out of hysterical high range, and it's actually pleasant to listen to -- but that never lasts, and that's a shame.

An overblown, overhyped dreamy swirl of sound that can't commit itself to being anything.

Devoid of Tanaka's usual unpredictability, Beautiful is bland, linear and frequently downright dull, with entirely too many six, seven and eight-minute songs running out of ideas long before the halfway mark.

This shit is boring.

Only the dub-inflected excursion of "Pipe Bomb" and the Clash-style raver "Eyes Wide Open" manage to break from boredom and form long enough to feel somewhat genuine -- as long as you don't listen to any of the lyrics.

One offers ten tracks of zipless triple-A folktronica -- bland, edgeless songs like "A Million Ways" that wouldn't even heat up the Ballroom D dancefloor on the final night of a Midwestern Regional Sales Conference.

A towering monument to Esthero's overpowering sense of self satisfaction, this mess overstays its welcome and abuses whatever attention you're willing to spend on it. In short, it's not a career highlight.

Take a Casio keyboard or any other early '80s dance machine, wheel it out and blow the dust off and you would most likely be able to produce an album at least as enjoyable as this one.