By the end of Teenage Dream--hell, halfway through--it's apparent that neither Perry nor her collaborators had much to say that was meaningful, or even particularly interesting. It sure didn't stop them from saying it anyway.

Despite the catchy moments, The Orchard is not a distinctive record. In fact, aside from showcasing Duquette's inventive, propulsive drum work, the only chance the album takes is that it doesn't really take any chances.

Mostly, though, the album is noisy jumble of competing sounds and ideas, none of which ever develops fully enough to make MAYA into as cohesive a statement as her first two albums.

His vocals here are mostly murmurs, and the musical accompaniment, though skillful throughout, lacks the punch of his previous albums.

It's a collection packed with groaning clichés and calculated banality, and while that's not so different from plenty of music in any era, Leave This Town is so formulaic, it could have come from a laboratory at DuPont, where they make plastic.

No such luck on 'Cause I Sez So, an album that, despite a few bright spots, is too flimsy and forgettable to honor the Dolls' legacy.

Professionalism is the order of the day, and most of Entertainment, recorded over two years and produced by Killers boardman Jeff Satzman, aims for the same middle ground.

The band's third full-length, Touchdown, is more of a 10-yard pass than a score.

The uneven Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle finds Callahan's knack for twangy crispness, pastoral imagery, and stone-faced singing very much intact, though he adopts a distinct growl to utter the title of 'My Friends.'

Sov never quite recaptures the brash personality and cutting-edge sound of her first album. The beats here are more pedestrian, the lyrics more tentative, and for all her talk in the press notes about resuming her career (after a six-month break) with a sense of control over her music, Jigsaw sounds more like an album without a firm direction than the wide-ranging statement of purpose she meant it to be.

An act that thrives on formula continues to mine it with Unstoppable, another celebration of puppy love and sugary hooks boiled down to their simplest forms.

The drum machine hallmark of his 1980s heyday is a staple of MPLSound, a disc that hauls that sound into the present with mixed results.

The third disc, Bria Valente's Elixer, is a tepid afterthought.

He doesn't quite succeed, though in the process of failing, he turns in his most restrained and focused recordings to date.

Deacon is hampered by his boundless creativity. In his mad dash to leave no pathway unexplored, he neglects to chart a course toward anyplace in particular.

'I Don't Even Know What Time It Is' sums up the whole record, stranded between sublime '80s guitar-pop and the more recent smarminess of Arctic Monkeys and Art Brut.

While that darkness gives the album its semblance of originality, it may prove incompatible with the group's mass-market ambitions.

Despite any pretensions otherwise, their second album sounds a lot like the Day-Glo disco and retro house being pushed by every other hip indie-dance act right now.

The good songs are great, but the empty bluster on some of the others overshadows the spunky personality that made Clarkson a draw in the first place.

The group doesn't stray far from the template, turning in another batch of hooky mid-tempo songs that are pretty without necessarily sounding distinctive.

As a spirited reintroduction, the album is by no means too little, but given the time the band has been away, it may be too late.

The irony is that such a colorful person and performer in life has seen so little of that fire (no pun intended for those who recall Lopes' most infamous exploit) carry over to her work.

Skin of Evil may come off as an unwieldy curio at first pass, but lingering listens will reveal the gripping gothic undertow of Mercer's warts-and-all songwriting, even for newcomers.

Universal Mind Control gets stuck in the same rut as so many other booty-jam records do: It's not all that memorable.

The preponderance of slow jams makes sense, given the introspection on display, yet none of them stands out enough to remind you that Brandy is more than just human.

It's too bad the best songs here don't really match up with her best performances, but that's nothing new for Spears.

'Ringleader Man,' remind you that whatever his vocal limitations, T-Pain has reintroduced the idea of melody to urban music, which is no small feat. However, predictable overkill of both the signature AutoTune warble and guest stars (Ludacris, Ciara, Akon, et al) obscures that accomplishment.

As it turns out, the 45-year-old English singer's exploration of Soul comes up short in interpretation as it retreads ground long since broken by others.