Conscious may be polished to a high gloss, but it lacks the personality and emotion that made Broods’ debut such a shadowy revelation.

The middle of the album is a problem, especially the Hiatus Kaiyote number, “Little Church,” a strange, bloodless clunker that drags down the Mvula (“Silence Is the Way”) and KING (“Song for Selim”) features that follow. The Badu track, the electro-bossa nova “Maiysha (So Long),” is fine but familiar. Miles Davis concept aside, Glasper’s still in “Black Radio” mode. It works, but it needs a little dirt, and probably a new challenge.

It’s the first Eisley album that fails to improve on its predecessor, recapitulating earlier ideas while seemingly in retreat.

How much Gorillaz fans enjoy The Now Now will depend on why they became fans in the first place. Anyone captivated by Hewlett’s world-building will probably feel a little let down, as will those who fell for their eclectic, big-tent approach to pop. That leaves the Damon Albarn diehards.

Too many tracks flirt with flat inconsequentiality, and too often the lyrics slip by without the sting of Mann's normally incisive wordsmithery.

It’s a hard album to dislike, and an equally hard one to love.

"Snakes & Arrows" is several steps ahead of more recent efforts.

If as much heart and group energy went into the rest of the tracks, Diagrams might have been the electrifying re-entrance of the Wu-Tang Clan that fans were hoping for instead of just the minor miracle it is.

These new songs are so amiable that you wonder where they’re meant to take you. Often the breezy journey--while pleasant enough--leads to dead ends.

It’s a fanciful and deftly assembled showcase of textures and moods, lovely and capricious. Taken alone, however, the music made this listener pine for a fistful of Stevens’s evocative melodies and commanding lyrics to anchor the ornamentation.

There’s an identity crisis in the way the band veers radically from hard-edged rock to slick, superficial pop. There are too many lyrical cliches.

Kidsticks swings back toward electronica; the problem is that it’s poorly done. It’s the first time she’s written on synthesizers, not guitars, and frankly it’s a mess.

The new effort often feels forced and rushed, with an overdose of stylized ’50s jargon.

Save for the playfully tempestuous “Th’Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame (Sonnet 129),” they’re serviceable and, like the spoken-word reprises by the likes of William Shatner and Siân Phillips, take few risks.

The best tunes are the first and last in “Weight of Love” (where Auerbach unleashes a two-minute guitar solo of vintage psychedelia) and the Stones-like punch of “Gotta Get Away.” Otherwise, most songs merely drift away.

It's an ornate, dizzying affair, where all his interests and talents collide in one brazen gesture. It's impressive in scope, but where does that leave the listener? Possibly with a headache.

It is a sonically adventurous album, with the E Street Band again accompanying him. But the songwriting far too often feels like an afterthought, canned and jarringly shallow.

Keyshia Cole's street edge sets her apart from her polished R&B peers, but the Oakland, Calif., songstress could have used a good editor on her second album, which is bogged down by too many ballads and overly lush production.

If you’re a total Chilton completist, you might want this album, but it’s not for everyone.

The results are mixed. Half of I Still Do falls into the easy-listening, cruise-control blues of Clapton’s later career, a long way from his fiery days with Cream and Derek and the Dominos.

Twice, he wisely enlists Jhene Aiko, who has become rap’s signifier for bruised emotions. Yet the conflicted despondency throughout (“I Know,” “Win Some, Lose Some”) never yields to enlightenment; the results are more murky than dark.

In time, Boxes likely will be seen as belonging to Radiohead’s business-side innovations more than to its musical ones. It’s enjoyable yet slight, a hedged bet on a still-unproven concept.

It's still a decent album, but it's also an opportunity lost.

Carlton's wheels are finally spinning forward, but they don't gain much traction.

Since her 2004 smash, “Goodies,” Ciara has had trouble finding the right commercial song and it appears she’s still searching.

The singer works with hit-makers The-Dream and Tricky Stewart on several tracks; unfortunately, it seems they've saved their best hooks for their next gig.

Not exactly different enough to make this the Hives's "White Album," but for once, things aren't literally so black and white.

For an artist whose reputation for painstaking perfectionism and poetic acumen is legendary, Little Honey is too much saccharine and not enough substance.