He sounds like the dude from Blink-182 - just another suburban punk whining about this and that.

The results are surprisingly tame, if not un-rocking.

Transference, the Austin band's seventh full-length, will serve as another whittling down of the singular aesthetic that has made them one of the most engaging American bands of the past decade.

What BYOP now lack is the element of surprise that made their debut such a kick; they no longer sound as if they had something to prove, and that drains their music of much of its charm.

While lukewarm as a whole, The Messenger doesn't suck nearly enough to bruise Marr's status as a guitar deity on wheels.

Ire Works is good science tarnished slightly by one bad experiment.

The downside of this open-armed approach is a lack of sonic specificity; OnMyRadio occasionally blands out into a nondescript stew of melismatic vocals and slow-jam beats.

Minus the Bear seemed more serious about their music than about its presentation.

Listening to the new MGMT album requires similar preparations to those for a prolonged psychedelic experience: you may want to leave some time in your daybook for unexpected detours, and it'd be wise to erase previous experiences from your mind for fear that heightened expectations may not be met and mass bummerage will ensue.

Blackout may be more a tribute to the skills of the A-list producers who guided her through the disc than to any of her own talents.

No one song here will change your life, but there are some that could come close.

Factory doesn't entirely squander the goodwill built up by their recent excellent reunion tour, but it's not significantly better than the standard Pollard solo album of the last decade.

It works, sometimes.

Future This is ultimately more melodic than its laborious predecessor. But around the "ballads" in the second half, you start longing for a point.

Only the nuttiest of fans will find any new details (the more-present backing vocals on Agaetis Byrjun stunner "Svefn-g-englar," or the beefed-up church organ swirl in "Ny Batteri"), even if the band's live majesty is captured in full-force.

This, their third album is as ambitious as its predecessors but mutes the joy in favor of a more serious tone and tighter focus--well, as tight as an album with a 10-minute number called 'Dragon's Lair' can be. The results are mixed.

Inasmuch as Stereolab have accomplished pretty much everything they could, Not Music feels like a passive retread.

Frontman Ross Flournoy and his mates kick up a ramshackle jangle-pop racket that gets its energy from always sounding as if it were on the verge of falling apart.

Gira's career has been one of violations and risks; there are plenty here. However, his trademark brand of post-rock/ambient alienation may finally leave listeners indifferent.

Even though the album's zany unpredictability can be thrilling, it often feels like Banks is adorning vacant tunes ("Arise Awake," the plodding instrumental "Another Chance") with bells and whistles.

Fans and detractors alike get exactly what they expect with bratty rockers like 'Outta My Head' and 'Rulebreaker,' but things seem to “get real” a bit with a more-introspective (if you can call it that) track like 'Murder (I Get Away With).'

For the most part, Ten$ion is a letdown in its utter normalcy.

This Pleasure is known, but in the end it overstays its welcome.

Much like the show’s second season, this second disc fails to build on its predecessor, rehashing the same digs at male bravado, emotional insecurity, and musical eccentricity.

Cosmogramma is decidedly more, uh, cosmic, than his 2008 "Los Angeles," in its atmospheric spiral away from the beat and toward a more free-flowing collage of instrumentation.

Breakout is a puzzling mishmash that makes sense only if you read between the lines and see the 15-year-old trapped in a machine that is partly of her own design.

I had to make several return trips to the lyric sheet to clear up which songs were love letters and which were screw-yous. But this sort of tone-deaf emotional bludgeoning tends to work in her favor on monstrous power ballads.

As Real Estate grinds on, it settles into a monotony of its own, until you can hardly distinguish one hazy nod-off jam from another.

The group often stretch their net too wide for their own good. Rolling Blackouts is more indecisive mixtape than flowing album.

Give You the Ghost is only as transfixing as its singer.

So the Death Set essay a Jekyll/Hyde routine of dramatic contrasts, pitting lightning-fried guitars, unpredictable computerized effects, and goofy bullshit against mellow hooks and relative subtlety.

This music is more about ambiance, with the luscious haze recalling a mood rather than shaping something distinctive. Has anything ever been so perfectly gorgeous and perfectly inconsequential all at once?

Carpenter remains one of the most thoughtful writers around, but lately she's been reluctant to leave her musical comfort zone.

Oneida have always been a thick stew of different influences, but usually with a dash of originality to bind it together; Preteen Weaponry never rises above pastiche. Nevertheless, the band’s hypnotic drone sweeps through the album like a swift current — it’s enough to generate anticipation for their future travels.

'Young Hearts Spark Fire' showcases their gleeful exuberance, but even on more subdued numbers like 'Sovereignty,' they still sound like two kids who don't yet know their own strength.

The only (and major) downside to the record is how it contains no standout tracks or surprising twists if you're already into Reagan-era hardcore.

You're still way better off listening to the studio version.

Beyond a couple of guest-vocal spots from fellow Ronson client Lily Allen and an out-of-place rap from English MC Sway, Off with Their Heads covers pretty much the same territory as the Chiefs' first two discs.

Pyramid lacks the spark a document of this importance deserves.

The melange of old sonic idioms doesn't say anything remarkable about their sources or feel particularly original. White Denim sound ready to craft a groundbreaking record--D just isn't it.

Degeneration Street is a bit of a tease, a solid alternative-rock album with some exciting sounds that afford only a peek into the Dears' potential.

There are synths that buzz, synths that whiz, synths that glow in the dark--the luxurious texture may put you in an electro-psych trance. But Young Galaxy are greedy. Not satisfied with being masters of atmosphere, they also aim for hooks--most of which are not sticky enough to jolt you back to the waking world.

Sometimes it gets too cheerful.

Rising Down is a grim mirror of a particular time and place, one that will still be worth the look when (if?) things get better somewhere down the line.

Here they get back to where they once belonged, layering all manner of squiggly synth riffs over the kind of sleek techno grooves that define Get Physical, the well-regarded Berlin label they helped found. That gives the music an appealingly relaxed vibe, but it also produces the slight scent of concession.

Somebody needs to boot Nielson off his why-fi connection: beneath the murk is the work of a riveting craftsman.

Vannucci as a vocalist and lyricist lacks the star power to keep up his larger-than-life showboating over the course of 40-plus minutes.

Motorizer, much of which the band recorded at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 outside LA, is Motorhead’s first studio album since... well, actually, only since 2006, when they released "Kiss of Death," which sounded pretty much exactly like this one (not to mention the 22 before it).

For a proper introduction, Cloud Nothings leaves much to be desired. But talk about highlights: if you can get through the sing-along chorus of "Should Have" without a big, dumb smile on your face, you might just be a heartless bastard after all.

Again and Again is a beast of a different color, the sound of a classic New Order or Pet Shop Boys track--if someone had first sunk his incisors in and drained the blood from it.

The Eternal is a fun, superficial tangent, disappointing in its regressiveness but enjoyable as long you don't examine it too closely.

Chalk up at least some of this disconnect to Brendan O’Brien’s production, which is often so slicked down and smooshed together that it doesn’t just airbrush the band’s jagged edges, it sandblasts them.

Steam Days is usually pretty, but it's also a snooze.

Of the Cathmawr Yards is Ambien-fueled folk that never rises above room temperature, well-crafted yet lacking in passion and vitality.

Forsaking subtly Southern melancholy in favor of jangling, twanging hillbilly heartbreak, Here's to Taking It Easy misplaces amplified country fever instead of channeling it.

His much-delayed solo debut eschews the kind of risk his productions are known for, and the result turns into one big mash of slow fades waiting for pretty ladies in the video.

Those vocal harmonies are used to good effect in the blue-eyed-soul tune 'Alaska.' But 'Die Die Die,' a slow and raggedy piece of psychedelia complete with funereal organ but thrown askew by out-of-place handclaps, is far too taken in by its own gloom.

Not everything is new on Everything Is New, this young London singer's sophomore set, but enough is to make you wonder what on earth persuaded Jack Penate to ditch the ample charms of his terrific debut.

Safari Disco Club is unlikely to find itself in the speakers of many dance parties on this side of the Atlantic in coming weeks.

What Spiritual, Mental, Physical documents is a group kicking around possibilities that could go somewhere great, but as they appear here, only a handful of these half-cooked ideas deserve an audience.

Aphrodite feels like a disjointed hodge-podge of shallow Hi-NRG dance-floor bangers for a decidedly older crowd.

On "Cynic's New Year," Portland, Ore., indie-folk duo Horse Feathers stick so firmly to their sonic guns that it becomes tightly constricting.

Returning after 11 years of officially not existing, what's left of ATR could've focused their energies on kicking lots of ass. Instead, they indulge spoken-wordy, freshman-year non-profundities that mostly siphon energy from the get-up-and-f*ck-some-shit-up ethos present on a few okay tracks like "Activate" and "Codebreaker."

Individually, these songs pack an emotional wallop, performed with a passion that is rare in today's indie-rock scene of disconnected cool. But taken as a giant lump, they're exhausting dead-ends: 12 straight climaxes cancel each other out - and Babel could use a little rising action.

Bland, quasi-political lyrics and zonked-out, dead-end textures.

But as a musical concern, the Conchords can’t hold a candle to [Tenacious] D, a shortcoming that’s much more apparent on this homonymous CD than it is on TV.

Only the title track bears any resemblance to what Dashboard once were.

Keys and Codes, which inverts the title of Death Cab's last record, feels slapped together, which is disappointing when you consider the array of talent present.

Besides sounding more like laptoppers Fennesz and Tim Hecker than proto-drone cousins Sunn O))), All the Way even dips into the glorious filter sweeps of trance music, here twisted toward sonic decay rather than utopia.

Gorilla Manor is listenable and inoffensive, but it doesn't express a single aforementioned component of its genre with any gusto.

The murky production seems lazy rather than artful; the hard-rock riffs don’t kick as hard as they’re meant to.

The Devil's Rain is chock full of good, campy horror business.

Too many of the songs rely on a stilted, march-like rhythm that makes them sound formal and restrained, especially when paired with Newman's arch lyrical delivery.

Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage fails by making the obvious choice at every turn.

Freedom is mostly lame club tunes with mega-auto-tuned vocals about wishing "I could just stop by and lay by your side."

Their loping AM-radio psychedelia--like later Stereolab or lighter Dungen--engages with enough noise (if not complex rhythms) to keep the band out of mawkish territory.

Though Eno is adequate, moments where he takes over the collaboration (such as on "West Bay" and "Watch a Single Swallow . . . ") are too under-nourished and ponderous to suggest that he's giving us something new.

La Radiolina is the most rockist album of his solo career--and also the most disappointing.

Yes, there are some colorful, more fully realized moments toward the end, but all the mumbling and fussing it takes to get there is murder.

Like any great jingle, it leaves you with nothing but a vague craving for the product, without quite knowing why you need it.

The rest of the album, which was produced by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, never quite lives up to that early peak.

The heart is here, but the lyrics have him sounding like a man who’s turned healing into a systematic process — a man who’s heard too much kind advice or maybe sat through too much therapy.

Despite the raucous vibe, Diamond Rugs is flawed - scattered, unfocused, and rather long, at 14 tracks.

Ritual is so grandiose that it rarely has room to breathe.

The Donnas get the ball into the red zone from time to time on Bitchin', but they never really score.

Polished, tuneful, and utterly unmemorable.

Where's the band's personality? Promises glimmer everywhere, as when off-kilter instrumental breaks start stabbing away at "18th Street," but the entire album eventually drifts past without delivering anything as sonically-or emotionally-provocative.

Too often on The Evolution she’s looking over her shoulder, too self-conscious to be a real seductress.

Kasabian can’t do anything besides snarl, a limitation that’s starting to show after only two albums.

The meta quality of the immoral, libidinous singer refracted through unblinking irony feels too transparent for a songwriter of Cocker's depth.

Brian Wilson and his karaoke-smooth backing band the Wondermints have instead given us something on par with 1970s Beach Boys--kinda bloated, kinda silly, mostly out of date, but with enough earnestness and pop intuition to be so, so, so puerile that hating it would be like hating Raffi.

The release is not without brief visits to riff heaven, and it’s in the details that there are pleasures to be found....But too often you bop along to the tight drum/bass syncopations only to forget what you’re listening to--or worse, why.

Still, like the lovable Muppet, Flaws is just a little too green to have any major impact.

Of all the possible directions the band could have taken, they decided on generic coffeehouse folk pop, with predictably pleasant-yet-dull results.

Diver is depressingly one-note, trimming back the band's scope and muscle. For some reason, Callan Clendenin sings every line in the same tiring, vacant croon, and its charm fades with each track, as does the Garageband-style production.

Although Scattered Trees get emotionally expansive throughout this full-length debut, there's a distinct lack of production (and even playing) here, and that colors the proceedings with an anonymous hue.

For a while, it's promising: "Only If for a Night" pits Welch's soulful-and-strange vocal gymnastics against a firecracker beat and a gang of chorus chanters. But elsewhere, Ceremonials feels drained of personality.

Despite always titanic levels of rock-star delusion must at some level be aware that this time they have turned in a truly half-assed piece of work.