Many of the lyrics on Party Music amount to no more than slogans, maxims, opinions.

A handsome channel 13 complimentary tote bag of an album that polishes his image as the fantasy rebellious son who hangs at socialist bookstores and swipes your Gram Parsons records.

And while Holmes can't be faulted for applying cut-and-paste to mood and drama as well as sounds and beats, his tracks' lack of freshness still adds up to an ambitious letdown.

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.

The new album isn't terrible, just dull.

It's all very outsized and uppity, falling right in line with the current dictum in dance music that every song must be able to be mashed up with both Kanye West and this week's indie-rock star.

In terms of sheer intensity of sound, it's as if the Comets of old have been miniaturized and are looking up at you from inside a Grateful Dead lunch box.

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

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.

Beautifully engineered, Circus sounds chocolaty and recombinant even when it doth protest the Enlightened Guy angle too much.

The last 10 or so minutes of the CD veer between bursts of riff noise more smoothly recorded than expected and washes of music to watch soft porn by, indicating the charm of being proudly abrasive and busy is wearing off.

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

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

This is a definite step up from the all-pall-and-no-pulse feel that made Espers' 2004 self-titled album too stuffy.

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.

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.

While Mercer's writing is still more satisfying than that of his peers, filler tunes like "Pam Berry" and "Black Wave" are a far cry from the tenacious stuff that made Chutes the subject of lavish hyperbole.

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

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

[It] doesn't pack the out-of-nowhere melodic turns that enlivened Runners.

Receivers is what die-hard fans refer to as the record too far.

Imagine the cheerful fatalism of "Float On" without the hooks, which is bizarre: Hooks would seem to be Marr's specialty.

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.

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

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

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.

Her lyrics are a tricky thing-their literalism is both their greatest strength and a crippling weakness.

The Breakthrough improves on 2003's Diddy-helmed misfire Love & Life but lacks the character of 1999's eclectic Mary.

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

Mike Mills's and Peter Buck's acoustic midtempo strummings and electronic ambience match 1992's Automatic for the People for lethargy, without the looming darkness or catchy sentimentality that made it compelling.

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

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.

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

A hastily crafted follow-up, a subpar sequel, much more "Rocky V" than "The Godfather: Part II."

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.

Elvis makes you suffer for the good stuff with leaden conceits, overwrought hysterics, a useless reprise. And then he makes it all up to yoo-oo-oou.

This is the sound of a band run dry.

Ten New Songs is all introspection, closer in sound to a technologically updated Songs From a Room.

The Mobb Deep don sounds beyond frayed, barely restraining his byzantine gangster paranoia while scratching out his own self-convinced logic evoking both grief and menace.

This is the kind of thing indie boys put on when they want to have sex.

I Can't Stop works as return to form, as proof that Green's groove, voice, and riffs are largely intact. But Green gets tied down when production's slathered on a bit too thick, as if every Hi Rhythm soul lick must be utilized to substantiate the comeback.

You are way, way better off not projecting any kind of emotional subtext onto this record.

Takes rock to Seussian levels of ridiculousness.

The result comes across like the score to a film that never quite stays in focus, except for a bit of Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone in the second movement.

Clouddead's problem is their stubborn refusal to express anything.

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.

Beatles-style tunes crank out with steady snares, blaring power riffs, and languid keyboard interjections, but feel mundane.

It makes sense that, of the improvised songs, the rockers turned out best.

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.

The two-man, woogie-filled boogie team is fine for 30 minutes.

Doctor's Advocate isn't really all that dire, especially if you can get past the constant--and constantly labored--airing of, shall we say, grievances.

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.

Neither disjointed embarrassment of riches à la The Beatles nor conceptual magnum opus like The Wall, Stadium Arcadium is two hours of sometimes middling, sometimes masterful, mostly pleasurable mainstream rock.

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

Information ultimately suffers from the same hollowness that weakened Guero, but it's bolder at its best and less derivative of previous victories.

Edwards's lapses are largely counteracted by her sturdy melodies, her hard-hitting session drummers, and, mostly, her voice, which conveys acres of chin-up melancholy without even rolling up its heart-bedecked sleeves.

Televise's second act stumbles through a glut of mid-tempo glumness.

Their most monotonous album ever.... It sounds beatific in paradise, or soundtracking vegan Thai cuisine and organic sunflower seed muffins.

Nearly everything on Fashionably Late has a pristinely modulated solemnity, a refined, literal-minded perfection.... In a sense, Fashionably Late is too good--too enamored of the aesthetic straight and narrow, of reverse sentimentality--for its own good.

It's their mediocre album.

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.

Neither as bad as you might fear nor as good as you might hope.

Maladroit picks up where the Green Album slacked off, relying on the same chunky sonics that set "Hash Pipe" apart from Weezer's earlier, more lithe singles.

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.

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.

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

The repugnant misogynistic bullshit on Goblin sort of cancels any goodwill I have toward the guy. Particularly because it feels more like search engine optimization; Tyler makes no bones about his desire to hit the pop charts, and on too much of Goblin, he's doing it in the tawdriest way possible.

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.

Good Girl never settles on a sound, and Rihanna vacillates between aping Gretchen Wilson, Ashanti, Gwen Stefani, and Pink. Nonetheless, she often sounds every bit like the superstar she clearly intends to be.

Williams's record is brisk, clocking in under 40 minutes. But it takes far more risks, dabbling in Animal Collective–ish psych pastiche on "Baseball Cards," Kurt Fauxbain dummy posturing on the riotous "Idiot," and Phil Spector homage not once but twice-on the magical "Da Doo Run Run"–lifting "Mickey Mouse" and, less impressively, with a rip of the "Be My Baby" beat on "When Will You Come."

Gorgeously produced by the Syndicate, many of these tracks are piano-driven, mid-tempo dirges that take a while to get rolling; occasionally, as on "Be Invited," they just circle the block.

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.

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.

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.

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.

They've become lapidary masters. The trouble is, who's listening and learning?

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.

The Id suffers from the conundrum of all post-breakout second albums. You're disappointed either because the songs are not enough like the first one or because they're too much like the first but not quite as good.

One problem though: Mia peaks too soon. That opener is by far the strongest song. The rest is by turns meditative, breezy, intimate, and snoozy.

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.

VV:2 does have a bit of a for-hire feel.

For as overblown as Born is clearly intended to be, it's very difficult to love it for its nature--its gentler moments are more rewarding.

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

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.

Drag it Up doesn't have the gut-level impact of the older stuff.

Grandiloquent, glorious gobbledygook.

Every track is a pure battle, with searing bursts of abrasion chopping at lava flows of insane density.

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

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.

It's cocky, it's manufactured, it's too reliant on industry pal-downs, ugh, it's inorganic. Then again, it's perfectly of a moment where "All I Do Is Win" is the must-have self-fulfilling prophecy, and Planet Pit sounds like it's winning. And even if it isn't, well, it all but tells you to go ahead and groan.

Yeah, Jacked contains a few shadowy rewrites of Here for the Party tunes, but the players this time are more in sync with the star--the music is louder, beerier.

The best tunes here have that boys'-club vibe of the best early-to-mid-'70s hard-rock bands, dead-on and nailed.

First Impressions of Earth is the sound of the Strokes taking a formal, technical, and emotional leap forward, but leaving the tunes behind.

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

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.

Damage seems yoked to the early '90s.

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.

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 basically a minimalist record that coasts on one's predilection for NINoise.

Adams mines American Beauty and Workingman's Dead respectably, but his attempts at early-'70s Neil Young piano ballads come off as tear-stained love letters to himself, and hardly distinguish him as the guy who dropped out of high school to become Paul Westerberg.

Overall, the songs are weaker than before--too many feel cheesy, bland, half-baked.

As with most things Trail of Dead, it's bloated where it thinks it's profound.

Sure, the electrifying attack of Zen Arcade and New Day Rising is a distant memory. But Body of Song closes with two guitar anthems oversized enough to point back to Mould's best work in Sugar.

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.

Too Old to Die Young is a fully plugged-in affair that expands on the muscular sighs of its predecessor and ups the rhythmic ante.

That voice is still "that voice," but gravity was never what made it fly.

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.

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

As a consequence of his preoccupation with acting and "lyricism," Luda neglects to do what he does best: make fun music.

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

Hand-clappable tunes and delicious cover design aside, sharp narrative-driven writing has been what saves the band from being merely annoying or silly or cute; too bad Fold Your Hands Child entirely abandons the vivid narrative vignette model.

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

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.

Anchored by predigested melodic hooks, Nelly's songs seem composed with the sole intention of ending up as your next ringtone. [Combined review of both discs]

Fire Songs isn't a masterpiece, but it's in the right ZIP code.

Even more telling is her frequently blank-eyed delivery: She's never been a great vocal interpreter, but on Fatale she sounds about as present as she did on Blackout.

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.

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.

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.

Suggests nothing so much as Adrenaline Rush part two.

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

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.

These scuzzy Voidoids are as immature as Blink-182 were; they just have hipper ways of hiding it—like pretending punk and new wave were the same thing.

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

Up against the carefully realized Wide Awake, Digital Ash is a mess, and not just sonically.

Still waiting for the next Lo Fidelity Allstars album? Wish there were more Stereo MC's-like stuff in car ads? Wondering where great songwriting teams like Gallagher/Gallagher have gone? Then Kasabian were made for you! They offer all the same thrills of the aforementioned artists, and they sound like Primal Scream, too!

I'd call it "psych-drone-sludge" except it's more tuneful and lively than those words imply.

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.)

Compared to the patchwork G-funk on Dead Man Walkin, Tha Last Meal is a sonic wonderworld. Dr. Dre and Timbaland gussy up Snoop's drag with their unique shuffles, making his descent into even deeper banality irrelevant.

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.

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.

Meth serves up relatively safe, occasionally dope, and consistently scruffy boom-bap.

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.

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.

A little too sitting-on-the-dock-of-the-bay for Chris Breezy–trained earbuds, perhaps, Here I Stand is pure grown-man bidness.

As it was on 2003's O, Damien Rice's songs are so naked emotionally that even listening is akin to eavesdropping on a bad breakup.

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.

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.

¿Cómo Te Llama? is best when the songs seem to shake and quaver within their candy-coated shells; fittingly, that’s when they’re at their Strokes-iest.

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

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.

[Fridmann's] atmospheric flourishes have always been heavy handed, but here they muddle tightly conceived pop tunes that would've sounded better scrappy.

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.

Through headphones or computer speakers, Caleb's echoey vocals just don't ring credible. Their Black-Crowes-go-new-wave choruses are exciting enough, but they feel unearned after tiresome, oversung verses.

Together, they craft lilting, light-hearted art-folk that recalls something akin to Joni Mitchell sitting in with '80s British popsters Prefab Sprout at best, or some Renaissance Faire troubadour's best attempt at improv at its most mediocre.

The result is impressive genre prowess--especially when he invites Austin unknown Deon Davis (a/k/a Element 7d) to contribute some post-rap boogie on 'Crystal Lite,' or rips off Wham’s 'Everything She Wants' on 'I Choose You'--but Pants might still be flexing prematurely.

Anchored by predigested melodic hooks, Nelly's songs seem composed with the sole intention of ending up as your next ringtone. [Combined review of both discs]

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).

Nicely mimics the timbre of Tony Visconti-ville circa '71-'74.

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

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.

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.

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

Nearly every song sounds like either a redux of or reject from its predecessor.

They're the English equivalent of Fountains of Wayne.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Conspiracy of One? It's fine. Is there anything here as cute as "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)"? No: Like with Ixnay on the Hombre, their follow-up to the megahit Smash, this follow-up to the even more megahit Americana finds them in dance-with-the-girl-what-brung-you mode--more punk, less pop.

Why didn't they travel this far out of the box initially?

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

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.

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

While it's tempting to write it off as but one more retro paste-up, Swayzak's uncanny sense of texture, timbre, and space justifies an approach that otherwise seems like a drift toward Alzheimer's.

The idea of ascension, both literally and figuratively, is the album's prevailing motif, and it's the tracks that focus most intensely on this theme that are the strongest.

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

A couple of creative notches below 2000's gleaming Black on Both Sides.

Wheat's scrappy though sometimes endearing fourth album is clearly a stylistic protest against their only major-label release, 2003's bland, vexed, much-delayed-by-Sony Per Second, Per Second, Per Second . . . Every Second.

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

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.

Even though his arrangements and slum-beautiful tracks are sublime, his vocal abilities leave much to be desired.

Though the record is more believably grown than his main band's overblown 2006 Bruce ode Sam's Town, it's still a bit heartbreaking to see such a lovable peacock purposefully fading his colors.

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.

Throughout Maroon, though, producer Don Was mercifully dispenses with mawkishness in favor of a theatrical approach tailored for arena consumption.

Faced with competing for "pop" ambitions this "rock" wannabe never really had, she instead strides toward brunette-dom on the new, stalwartly unfun Goodbye Lullaby, which--if you couldn't tell from the piano on the cover-means Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch. This is the death of Auto-Tune, moment of silence. Except, you know, for the single.

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.

What lots of people loved about "Push" isn't much in evidence here, but neither is what lots of people hated about it.

Left unasked is the question of whether you needed that-the bondage theme, the 10-octave tantrum, the synth war, all of that-but don't expect the rest of her new album, Bionic, to inquire, either.

Calculated space-age power rock.

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.

Good Charlotte have hooks for days and the fun, gloomy Life and Death sounds like a moody missing link between Fountains of Wayne and Thrice.

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."

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.

Hamilton's vocals are occasionally plotted now with pronounced melodies, which is nice. But his strikingly affectless, prep-school delivery is abandoned in favor of a gritty, generic bark.

Sexuality doesn't sink 20 Y.O. as much as the beats do.

The patchwork of styles thrown around here distracts you from the album's strengths.

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.

To really care about this album you have to be able to get into the pure hard sounds of the dance-track percussion and the way Michael tends to garnish them with his voice.

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.

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

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.

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

It's zany, antiseptic kitsch, like the soundtrack to the ultimate Old Navy commercial.

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