Rather than referring to primal transgressions, however, Cowgill refers to the performative transgressions of earlier musicians. There is nothing wrong with this approach, and yet there is something about King Dude's particular gloss on neofolk that I find naggingly inauthentic.

The songs drag, the lyrics lag depth, and many of the songs break down into nothingness due to a lack of concentration and effort.

Unfortunately, for all the polish and gut that Grammy-winning producer Vance Powell brings to help turn diarrhea to gold, the songs lack idiosyncrasy, and Diarrhea Planet’s winking anachronistic irony is lost.

Unfortunately, I Dreamed We Fell Apart straddles the unhappy line between experimental music and very un-experimental lap-pop.

By the time he hits the solo, which sounds like a cracked organ from a crazy kiddie fair, you might find yourself thinking that some riddles are just not interesting enough to solve.

Building a Beginning takes to heart every criticism of his 2013 release, inverting it into something that, though restrained and even surprisingly heartfelt at times, does very little to save itself from being forgotten.

The LP plays at depth and synthesis while making do with simply reproducing indie electro-pop tropes.

This album will please Supergrass-adoring simpletons merely looking for a new album by their favorite band, but to everyone else it should be considered a major disappointment.

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

As far as products go, B.o.B. is, at the very least, highly marketable, if not terribly satisfying. The Adventures of Bobby Ray, like bubblegum, loses its flavor after about 15 minutes.

Ingenious in its conception as a soundtrack, weak and tedious as a standalone musical venture, an interminable experience despite its brevity.

Codes and Keys is littered with PDA for Gibbard's new celebrity wife Zooey Deschanel, but this especially garish monument to his muse would have been better placed on one of her She & Him album-wafers.

When Joyner’s at his best, he can break hearts in the most hopeful way possible; in these moments, he is as reinvigorating as a much-needed cry. But most of the songs on this album lack this quality, instead coming off as contrived and, as a result, harder to relate to.

Helena Costas and Danger Mouse combine the former’s folk pop proclivities with the latter’s penchant for hip-hop and psychedelia, and the results are mostly awkward and cumbersome.

The initial mystique of The Weeknd is gone, and we’re now confronted with the work of a young man who possesses an impressive voice, an incredible ear for production, and a complete lack of purpose in his confrontational, intensely graphic lyrical obsessions.

If anything, it's nothing: a dark, expensive, teenager programmed, radio-friendly, MTV-destined nothing.

Those pop songs, [not the ones on Herein Wild,] confess everything and never apologize. Herein Wild just disappears.

It features the same schizophrenic, influenced-by-everything quality of Dre's The Love Below, but where people were able to overlook the many boring-to-terrible tracks while skipping to "Hey Ya" or "Roses," The New Danger fails to feature as strong a centerpiece.

The LP isn’t internally coherent, isn’t particularly successful on its own terms, which is probably more of a sin than any imputed association with this or that philosophy could ever be.

There are some solid points buried deep down in the wreckage of Cole’s seven-bar pileup, but you’ll have to sift through a great, big, ambivalent pile of solecisms in order to get to them. As it turns out, that holds true for the vast majority of Born Sinner.

"It's Kickin' In" sounds like Linnell doing karaoke over a failed garage rock single, and most of the rest sounds like, well, Fountains of Wayne.

Here Comes the Cowboy sounds awfully similar to 1973’s Hosono House. But there’s a lack. Maybe it’s the dynamism displayed on Hosono’s debut that makes it so intrinsically enthralling, but on Here Comes the Cowboy, the whole thing feels more like American gaijin vs. Japanese cowboy copypasta.

Where Newcombe’s music once sounded fresh and lively, his political message both controversial and effectual, on My Bloody Underground his music is neither fascinating nor engaging.

There is too much focus (or carelessness, perhaps) on his herky-jerky flows that match drum for drum, and the simple rhymes and tired messages are pathetic.

All of the delicate, precious tom buildups that segue into invariably lofty choruses, all laced with the same pining slide guitars, overlay the record with a strummy, mid-tempo delirium that sets in once the considerable swagger of the first three tracks wears off.

Sadly, This is for the White in Your Eyes sees a band with great potential whose ambitions too frequently get the best of them.

Daft Punk have released an album so bland and repetitive that it may actually call into question all their past glory. It doesn't seem fathomable, but alas, the proof is seemingly inscribed in each note.

A real slog to get through.