Yorke's voice... has rarely sounded better, although the context ultimately disappoints.

His signature baritone, with its raspy textures and controlled intensity fits well with Southern soulster styles. However, he rarely diverts far from the original arrangements.

Arch and ostentatious, their music both falls victim to and exalts in Warhol's 15-minutes-of-fame declaration. Like a screenprint of a soup can, it's at once timeless and pointless.

Too many of these songs get bogged down in chord changes and lyrics likely to sound worn-out even to a 10-year-old.

Of course it's a gimmick, but about half of it works anyway.

Jack White took Loretta Lynn indie-rock Nashville with an unquenchable musical hunger and attainment that never had to feel sheepish about following the work of a music maestro as juicy and august as the late Owen Bradley. AJ Azzarto, Matt Azzarto, and Don Fleming, Sinatra's producers, do something else. They craft an indie-rock Nancy Sinatra, way too much of which is way too 1994.

At times it's a bit like a post-techno Jesus and Mary Chain, burying tambourine rattle and two-chord bangers beneath an avalanche of clicks and static.

Somehow, the Game is still coasting on wispy, West Coast–nostalgia fumes--chronic, red rags, lolos, etc.--but the goodwill, at this point, has pretty much exhausted itself.

Banks lacks 50's humor, vocal playfulness, and stone-cold articulation.

Although Devil Dirt has its rewarding moments, they're usually matters of arrangement rather than execution or personality, which means it's more about the chemistry of boy-meets-girl than about the specific boy or girl.

Half the time, we get songs of ambiguous quality, with more filler lines than killer ones, a big change from Fire's all-or-nothing approach.... But when everything comes together, the results are massively more rewarding than anything on Fire.

For all that sonic triumph, the lyrics feel like an empty gesture, sub–Trapper Keeper woe-mongering that'll thrill suburban teens but sounds odd coming from guys old enough to know better.

Too much dark and not enough dancer--textured passages that might sound great with luscious visuals, but are mere din from a cheap CD boom box.

Unless you dig Nick's poetry, grab the Polly songs and run.

Damage seems yoked to the early '90s.

When the pastoral Eno flourishes that started Vida off so promisingly return for a quick coda, Martin reverts back to his suavely crooning self, but blows it with his first four words: "And in the end . . . . " Bam, you're thinking 'Abbey Road,' and while Vida is far from a dog, it's just another unflattering comparison that the record itself needlessly invites--an extremely overconfident way to handle a crisis of confidence.

Though there's little of the powerpuff zoom associated with the New P's here, uptempo grins like "On the Table" make denying the pleasantness of it all impossible.

Nas doesn't ruin a decent beat, but rarely is he able to improve one.

When he flexes his craft, he corrals multi-tracked vocals of himself that coast over static guitar arpeggios, like a priest who prefers to clack his rosary beads in his bedroom rather than pray aloud in a chapel with his peers. If there's a Lord, he's grateful for the devotion, but for eavesdroppers, it does get tedious.

The result is so robotic in its attempt to jolt every single pleasure center every single second that any twist of human joy, lust, awareness, or reflection is assimilated into its brittle, crunky Borg cube.

They're the English equivalent of Fountains of Wayne.

He sounds as genuinely hurt and confused as any of us, but if he's gained any insight into that hurt or confusion, he's not about to express it.

Much of the music bears little resemblance to the down-tuned chug-and-glug found on the band's early records.

Some of the sound makes for gorgeous fury.... But a little concision--and a bit of Pete Wentz's tune sense--would've gone a long way.

Without Sis, Matthew still does just fine, but let's be honest: You know the style by now.

For a group who can be so compelling when they aim high and fall short, an effort so squarely average is all the more disappointing.

Problem is, Walk It Off is recorded like a single, 45-minute Big Event, rendering the alleged omniharp, tubular bells, and timpani mere liner-note abstractions.

That Eye is neither great nor terrible and often very good can be attributed to one part talent and two parts luck. But the fact remains that Pollard is far too willing to leave all the heavy lifting to the listeners.

And what a voice it is, dominating Body Talk Pt. 2 to a severe degree. Her alto, which sometimes mimics but never goes as far out as Kate Bush or Cyndi Lauper's, is like a fluorescent light on her music, washing out everything in its wake. If you love her voice, great; if you don't, it will cloy you to death.

Calculated space-age power rock.

So while Ecleftic ain't wack, it's no carnival. It realizes the B-boy boho dream much better than caricaturist "hiphop metal" acts, but Clef served our interests much better last time at bat.

Magic, a maddeningly uneven record that often sounds like legends coasting, most apparently on 'Living in the Future' and 'Last to Die.'

Tossed-off, underdone, monotonous, unfinished, and redundant maybe, but not bad.

Perhaps if she'd just kept it crunk, she could have produced something really deffer and fresher, instead of merely pleasantly reminiscent of the past.

Tom's not quite so lovable when he's preaching his anti-non-Petty doctrine in a series of songs that often don't rise above the level of mediocrity themselves.

Like any good corporate-mandated sequel, it reprises the strengths of its original product with as little variation as possible, to predictably diminished returns.

This rarely works as the heart-heavy traveling music Petty has in mind; while he flees or revisits dark corners in every song, Petty sings like he has nothing at stake.

Call Me Crazy arrives and hedges the bet: Downy pop blooms next to pedal-steel-driven barroom weepers. The title is apt--this one’s got a pronounced multiple-personality disorder.

So You're the One, like all of Simon's work since Graceland, has to be judged a failure.... Image be damned, but pop doesn't just flow out of groove and penmanship.

The album plays to the band's strengths, but there's simply nothing here as catchy as "My Way" or as infectiously fun as "Break Stuff."

If Vandervelde's new set struggles to generate the same charge, maybe that's because it doesn't approach its source material with the same aggression or playfulness.

This time, Steve Lillywhite and the other producers assembled simply construct a U2 album in miniature, mixing in the Edge's processed-guitar trademark whenever you fear they're straying into unforgivable un-U2ness. That's just not enough.

Lover's defects stem less from long length than from how densely Krug packs each nervous tic.

A halfway successful attempt by Cook to stake his claim as Serious Artist.... Cook started work on Halfway feeling paralyzed by the problem of how to bypass big beat's exhausted fastbreaks-acidriffs-oldskoolsamples formula. He found his path by partially abandoning breakbeats in favor of house's hypnotic four-to-the-floor, and by bringing in what he's called an "almost gospelly" flavor.... It's surprising, though, how much dated, big-beat-style pummel you have to endure before the almost gospel vibe's glorious return.

In the process of adding new facets to their sound, Truth winds up reinforcing self-imposed limitations.

The world only needed one Electric Six album, but for a few understated moments, this one makes the case for a second.

It's all so precious; let's hope they still break shit live.

The new album isn't terrible, just dull.

On the scale of Singing Shat, Has Been ranks above the Shakespeare rap in Free Enterprise, but below "Mr. Tambourine Man."

Though some sections are plodding and one-dimensional, others lock into place.

If the poisoned well of bad love has soused some of her most brutally detailed observations (see crushers like Essence's "Reason to Cry" or World Without Tears's "Overtime," for starters), confronting mortality seems to have thrown Williams into wandering, formless meditations.

It's solid, but as with Radiohead's Kid A follow-up Amnesiac, it highlights its predecessor's brilliance rather than asserting its own.

Mainly there's either promising melodies (the "Crucify"-aping "Parasol") ruined by cringe-y lyrics, or decent lyrical ideas executed like a Yoplait commercial. ("This is sooo good." "Pirates good!" Cue bongos.)

There are tracks on Cake and Pie that suggest Loeb might have been a badass had she realized herself when boofy bangs and women with lightning-bolt guitars were defining pop.

Is cumbersome when it seems self-conscious, and works well when it seems effortless, when Talib ceases overcompensating with overproduction, diva guest spots, or repetitive political invective.

Winning Days is still more interesting than any album by obvious progenitors Oasis because the good parts come up at the most random moments--spontaneous solo here, appealing harmony there.

America's Sweetheart is one big, juicy fuckup, and fortunately for Courtney, there will always be little girls who hate being little girls, and are looking for a fairy godmother to show them how to self-destruct. Unfortunately, Karen O, Brody Dalle, and Amy Lee all made cooler records.

While he's technically adept at playing the blues, it's perfectly clear the only heartache Mayer knows how to emote comes the morning after a night of hearty partying.

It's what you might expect from a bunch of musos playing with Cubase or ProTools: sampled loops, Brixton dub, trip-hoppy tangents. U.N.K.L.E.'s bratty nephew, really, though the album sounds like the group locked the metronome on "heavy funk groove"--chugging and satisfying at first, it feels exhausted by the fifth or sixth track.

Alas, despite dipping into conscious rap territory, Luda's freaknik is still in full effect.

As if hell-bent on rewarding brand loyalty, however, Brooks does himself in by recycling his typical subjects.

Beneath the haughty schmaltz of his fifth LP—embodying Herb Albert one moment and a particularly peach-scented Little River Band the next—there are only momentary flashes of the high-quality torch songs we fell for so long ago.

Shelter doesn't settle into one sound--which is fine--but it's never able to harness its manic energy into anything coherent.

A rep-building, played-out retread of gangbang reveries set to so-so def beats by this hiphop minute's latest multiplatinum matinee thug-idol for the girls-gone-wild set.

The set is just a curio, banking everything on Black's low register, which has the texture but not the stamina to pull off so many slow, velvet lullabies about sour romance.

Too quick and severe on the brakes, Black Mountain stunt their own grandiosity in the name of dynamics or patience.

This is the sound of a band run dry.

Padded with medleys and between-song skits, hampered by a demonstrable lack of both personality and hooks, it's craven, depressing, and irresistible all at once.

Now Diamond Hoo Ha, find Supergrass mired in a sort of stasis. We always knew the lads were limited to just three chords; with efforts that feel measured, contrived, and dawdling, they finally sound like it.

Confused rock and r&b conceits wander into onrushing 16-wheelers of c&w—barbershop quartet-ish background vox, crisp git-fiddle plucks, lyrics equal parts syrup and cheer. The tightrope he's walking is dental floss, but he still leans into every note.

Despite creating some killer drones in '03 and '04, the duo has been in decline for more than two years now, and the trend continues with All the Way.

Serene but emotionally flat, Valley feels like too much church on a cold Sunday afternoon.

It's all very funny and cheeky, but after a full album's worth it grows cloying, like a good Saturday Night Live skit that's two minutes too long.

Most tracks trade impact for cheesy hooks, skittery beats, and rudimentary keyboard riffs that can't help but evoke that jiggly seizure-type shit Puffy's dancers were big into a few years back.

The reason this convoluted rock opera can't match the Who, U2, Green Day, or even Styx is that Danger Days is a story constructed without rising or falling action.

Those who looked at the Distillers as the hope of 2003 might be disappointed that Dalle's stuck in 1994.

Only once do the Kings offer an identity worth bugging out in a club over, on the reckless and fantastic "Taper Jean Girl." The rest of the time, it all seems more confused and cynically gimmicked than inspired.

Abandoned Language is film noir compared to the group's previous claustrophobic slapstick, and unfortunately that newfound seriousness isn't such a good thing.

His old-school MC sensibilities clash with his need to make unit-shifting quotas, and it trips up the record.

Hitsville's unrelenting smoothness verges on kitsch and quickly becomes grating.

Do It! is the first Clinic record that seems assembled from bits of old Clinic records, its personality the result of combined ideas rather than new ones.

When there is a firm hand reining him in, Game can still make good rap music. Left to his own devices, however, he produces a dismaying mess.

Take Foxy Brown's (belated) fourth album, Brooklyn's Don Diva, as the latest missed opportunity.

[The album] s clogged with reverb-choked guitar riffs too woozy to propel the garage rock they ought to carry.

A lot of its songs are ballads that ooze sap like an abandoned sponge.

The most disappointing aspect of this record is that Beck has fallen into the trap of confusing earnestly repeated clichés for personal lyrics.

Pink Friday is full of boring....the most confounding thing about Pink Friday is that it lacks style, lacks weirdness, whatever your opinions of how deeply that weirdness goes.

Suggests nothing so much as Adrenaline Rush part two.

The near-crazed desperation to please listeners for her own sake is all over Merry Christmas II You: A "gift" to her fans (or so she claims) that they, of course, must pay for, it's her fascinating, career-long saga of self-obsession in a nutshell.

T.I. vs. T.I.P. makes for a confusing listen, which is a shame—fans would probably never have questioned who T.I. is until he started questioning himself.

Furtado is game... but Timbo brings beats, not chemistry. Loose isn't a love child, but a bump-and-grind that never finds a groove.

Takes rock to Seussian levels of ridiculousness.

Anti-war, pro-environment, religious ('Chelsea Rodgers' only gives up trim if you're baptized), and funky, Planet Earth is still merely an excuse to tour.

With 10 tracks adding up to a mere 34 minutes, this follow-up is much more wan and insubstantial than its predecessor.

There's little on Parachutes that demands attention or punctures the pensive spell, and, unlike Travis's, Coldplay's hooks are slight.

So while '5 Times Out of 100' and 'My Best Friend' revive old times, you miss Steve Bay's unhinged vocals and jagged keyboards elsewhere when HHH instead try to compensate with a funky chant- rocker ('Give Up') or a big-drama Raspberries tribute (the title track).

Townshend's faith in rock 'n' roll as an appropriate vehicle for his biggest ideas is admirable, but Endless Wire does little to justify his devotion.

By the second and third tunes, the game is up. We get it: Gang of Radio 4. This is Radio 4 Clash. And so on.