Maybe once the Ting Tings stop trying so hard to convince everyone they're having a good time and start actually having a good time, these cute little ballads will no longer be their sole redeeming quality.

Lambency's lack of contrast and its vacuum of irresolution are only symptomatic of the record's holistic problem: there's not much memorable to grab onto.

So this record's creative and artistic value is pretty much nil--in fact it only just hits competent.

More so than the album's overall malaise and inconsistency, it's this ridiculous (and in some cases, offensive) attempt at "edginess" that's most off-putting.

Trilla, Rick Ross's inexplicable second album, is every bit a fatty contemporary American disaster.

Like hearing DLR's lonely voice doing its best in the absence of accompaniment, most of Robotique is just sort of depressing.

Bell X1 generically compartmentalize everything instead and end up with a record that doesn't even top the work of their former bandmate.

The slightly more dynamic Louis XIV only give you testosterone-fueled rock at its least appealing extremes: heedless lust or, arguably even more repulsive, cheesy balladry.

Yoav goes about his expecting some sort of kneejerk praise for rolling dolo, but thanks to a total lack of depth, sonic or otherwise, all I see is the gimmicks, the wack lyrics.

Neither here nor there, the funklesss would-be dancefloor fodder of P.D.A. frankly comes off D.O.A.

The problem isn't that Red Carpet Massacre pushes Duran Duran out of their comfort zone. The problem is that they sound just a little too comfortable there to make the most of bad situation.

Pull the Pin might be going for the uncluttered "production" of older Rick Rubin, but instead it cops the sterility of newer Rick Rubin, each song lumbering on a chassis of waterlogged tempo and Jones' wooden melodies, begging for just about anything to grab you.

Beyond the Neighbourhood is the sonic equivalent of a beautiful coffin.

Yet another standardized LP of glorified Dave Matthews tunes.

Harris reduces pop's limitless possibilities to one-joke self-parody, his youth his most distinguishing characteristic, an unremembered yesterday always more vibrant than today.

On We Are the Night, the Chemical Brothers have switched from integrators to imitators.

Slapping a brand new bag on these pasty-white-dude tunes more often bombs than not.

As annoying as Endicott's mascara-tainted bellyaching was on the Bravery's debut, his histrionics-for-the-masses commandeer the group's stylistic direction on The Sun and the Moon, cheapening already trite regurgitations of Robert Smith confessionals by bloating them to anthemic proportions.

The problem with Twelve isn't the staid song selection so much as this dogged insistence on staying faithful to the originals.

I highly recommend that Animal Collective fans seek out the re-reversed copies of Pullhair Rubeye [available illegally on the Internet]. They are enjoyable.... But then there's, you know, the thing that sits on store shelves and costs money. And that version of Pullhair Rubeye is remarkably dull.

There are a few quality tracks among these 16-- enough for a pretty good EP-- but this is an 80-minute album with at least an hour of stuff on it that sounds at best like studio outtakes.

On Paths Taken, the Junkies sound like a band battling obsolescence and trying entirely too hard to make an impression as an inventive and therefore relevant band.

Ghosthorse and Stillborn tends toward lazy, meandering nothings.

Traffic and Weather finds them treading water in the worst possible way.

There's virtually zero worth to this album, a combination of zealous experiments with Garage Band and would-be Music and Lyrics soundtrack cuts.

On his lonesome Anderson is oppressively unimaginative.

It's plenty catchy and big, but it's also wildly uncreative and predictable.

Full of the kind of basic strum-alongs and diaristic musings that yield showers of Starbucks praise.