Much like Aaliyah’s sophomore effort One In A Million a decade ago, Ciara: The Evolution is the sound of a babydiva starting to really find her voice.

While little here strays far from the sound Death Cab has been tweaking for the past five years, it still makes for an intriguing listen for even casual fans of the group, and has its share of genuinely stunning moments.

Under My Skin is a far more balanced album than Let Go, allowing Avril to stretch out a bit more and not suffer the troughs that typified any song that happened to follow a Matrix penned track.

The vast majority of this release just doesn’t stick together coherently and suffers because of it.

Like Trans Am’s late-90s material, this album is enjoyable without being astonishing.

In a time when The Darkness is successfully parodying cock-rock, members of Velvet Revolver are still earnestly carrying the torch. Whether you think that’s noble or laughable will probably determine your opinion of this album.

At 11 tracks, it doesn’t exactly famish the vaults, and its instrumental-heavy tracklist prohibits it from being a good newbie recommendation.

Planet Earth marks a slight improvement on that one ["3121"], which is progress of a sort, but incremental advances like this almost guarantee that the marketing hoo-hah will get more attention anyway.

It wouldn’t be so bad if The Stills didn’t kill the majority of the newly minted loose-limbed percussion and flighty major key romps ("The Mountain")--with drivel choruses and intermediate tricks (flooding the speakers with a porridge of every conceivable instrument).

Greedy Baby doesn’t make sense sans visuals, and even with them it makes… little sense.

Wu diehards will see it as a 35-minute core of classic Method Man, while critics should view it as a 60-minute behemoth that's a marked improvement over Tical O and Judgment Day, but still padded with pointless skits and Charmin-soft rap & bullshit.

At first listen, N.B. sounds creepy. But ignore the lyrics, surrender yourself to the joys of pop songwriting and N.B. seems to approach perfection.

Beans has yet to learn, however, that we’re paying the price of admission to hear him wrap his tongue around the mic, not screw around with his drum machine.

It doesn’t always work, and the record has a scattered second half that undercuts the sonic unity of the first, but the best moments here are as starkly affecting as any of Garnier’s past work.

A lot of these songs blur together and become indistinguishable.

If music is best judged by its immediate effect on the listener, this record succeeds and cannot be forgotten. In this case, that's not a good thing.

Even with Kozelek's laudable work on this outing I feel that something more robust could have emerged had the roots been original.

The biggest problem might be Rice’s vocal technique. On O, he had a tendency to endearingly strain for notes he couldn’t reach. Now, it sounds like he’s purposefully written songs to allow him to overextend his thin voice.

Past a handful of listens this becomes quickly uninspired.

There is an immediacy and zest to the Rakes’ latest effort that is commendable, but it’s not that memorable.

I’m making a mix CD for someone and it’s an incredibly difficult one because she’s into crap like Ben Harper and Lemon Jelly, and I can’t even impress her with a Travis promo CD because they’re ‘too boring’ even for her!

Though you really can’t forget any of the work he’s done in the past decade or so with his former band, Jason Loewenstein has really pulled off a gem of a record that momentarily loses you in his own music.

The first disc actually suggests the band is capable of making a live album worth your time even if you didn't like Bring It On and Liquid Skin, but its welcome is worn out and its charms are fatally undercut by the turgid, unnecessary second disc.

Wholly forgettable.

While the "darker follow-up to the breakthrough album" angle was an unavoidable cliché for Louder Now, Taking Back Sunday does their part by giving the more aggressive workouts a stronger sense of purpose.

Kill Them With Kindness might be a rewarding listen, for example, for a Stars fan, but then again it might be better to stick with the more familiar originals.

For all its tasteful craft, aesthetic unity and knowing winks to its makers’ history, it’s simply not very interesting

I wish I could critique them for something other than their obvious debt to Spoon. Sadly, that’s the most distinguished characteristic behind the studied, boardroom-designed pop of Robbers on High Street.