There are a number of songs with enough stuff to listen to many times, but there isn’t anything grand enough to linger in the mind like an inamorata.

It lacks an authorial voice. Since no one made this album, no vision binds it together with its identity--it doesn’t cohere.

ARTPOP wants to hide that it doesn’t have much to say.

No matter how you want to face it, the secret is out: pop isn't Friedberger's bag.

Unfortunately, what starts off like clockwork ends up as predictable as the inevitable passage of time.

Because the album risks so much in its all-in politics, the songs on their own are more difficult to judge. For that reason, the album is enjoyable almost solely in small doses.

T.I. vs T.I.P. is mercifully light on the requisite skits illustrating its dichotomy, but you almost wish there were more of them to explain the album’s weird alchemy of simultaneously overwrought and undercooked production and flaccid, self-absorbed lyricism.

It doesn’t require the patience or emotional/intellectual involvement that albums I typically listen to require. The cool thing, though, is that it does have quite a bit of redeeming value.

Pared down and stripped to its primal rudiments, the latest Timberlake saga could have been something truly epic; instead, it just feels unnecessarily immense.

Dumb Luck is an album that desperately tries to be spontaneous and carefree but eventually ends up sounding stunted and alienating.

One Plus One is One sounds like an attempt to make a more serious statement, but with little substance invested in it. The result is Badly Drawn Boy's first boring album.

The playful experimentalism and inherently subversive nature of Dead Petz is enjoyable (in a sickly-sweet way) throughout, yet it’s experimentation is akin to playing absent-mindedly with a shitty synthesizer iPhone app.

If you've been pining for a fresh take on the libidinous funk of yesteryear, or looking to go back to prurient, carefree days of teenage infatuation, the National Trust is for you, ooo, ooo, yeahhhhhhh.

Through it all, Green’s show tune-y vocals are at center stage, and though the compositions are often too busy and can detract from his rolling lyrical intricacies, Sixes and Sevens is a very good record, if still a step short of great.

The problems start with the production, which feels empty and stolid, the guitar plunking around like it has nowhere important to go and the drums tap-tap-tapping out mundane, aimless little shuffle rhythms.

All of Us, Together doesn't feel right as the first full-length statement being made by an artist of this caliber, but it definitely serves as an appealingly breezy 45 minutes of summer dance music.

If only conviction had been more successfully transposed onto their music, the band could have produced a follow-up that would not have had to contend with standing in its predecessor's large, looming shadow.

The entire album is too claustrophobic for its own good.

Most of the songs here aren't even good enough to be considered for a knockoff commercial targeted at the "indie-inclined" twenty-something demographic.

It’s not that 31 Knots aren’t succeeding in flexing their musical chops--they just don’t know where to take them.

The Appleseed Cast have finally managed to get things back on track, which will hopefully influence revisionists to give these guys their proper dues.

Folk devotees may have a little more patience for the proceedings here, but I find it doubtful that Seconds will come as much of a revelation to anyone.

A disappointment, maybe, but that’s to be expected – and shouldn’t we prefer that he want to give us something new?

Jackie doesn’t often transcend its own well-established boundaries, and it doesn’t flow as ***Flawlessly as TMT favorites Beyoncé or 1989 (much of Jackie’s most interesting moments occur in its first half), yet it is a solid alternative for those craving that rare and varied pop gem that warrants repeated listens.

Ultimately, Inherit is neither a great nor terrible album. Although it certainly sounds like it was a hell of a lotta fun to record, I don’t think even die-hard fans will get overly excited about it.

Unfortunately, There’s Me and There’s You is a precipitate more than a catalyst, a document far less persuasive than a documentary about its own creation would be.

Since half of experiencing Tangerine Reef comes from experiencing the visuals it accompanies, it’s hard for me to really vibe with this album as a complete thing. Really it feels less than that, like a side table, a bed frame, or a pierced hole in an ear with no earring in it.

Taken in small bites, there are great moments here, but you're unlikely to clean your plate and ask for seconds for all 14 courses. I for one will be hanging out for dessert, but I don't imagine I'll be invited for dinner again.