Despite all his sonic island-hopping over the years, Krug has an aesthetic noticeable as his, and unfortunately his backing band here doesn't quite have the same unique musical vision.

There’s nothing really wrong with a single one of them. The problem is that fans of Johnston’s music have been here before.

Gaga has always been able to anchor her haughty conceptual undertakings with simple, catchy tunes, but with Born This Way, the persona and the message are starting to bleed into the songs. It's not a good look.

Narrow Stairs finds Gibbard more than willing to play to type, offering the same staid character sketches he’s used since his first EP and songs that reiterate his point, that, like, love can be rough on you.

The third album of the formula, the lovely-titled Heart On, shows that the Eagles of Death Metal have reached their limits, but not without a noble effort to keep on rockin’.

He comes across as an unfocused sample artist who is too eager to show off all the cool stuff he can do.

What we're left with feels like a big blur--an entertaining and wacked-out trip to Wonderland, but not one that I feel particularly compelled to return to.

While groping for a consistent aesthetic, Young Prisms provide moments of delightful ascent, only to seemingly let their worse angels drag them back into staid, self-inflicted sludge.

The Long Blondes sophomore album, Couples, is a disappointing follow-up to their sublime 2006 debut, "Someone to Drive You Home," but not as disappointing as it initially appears.

It was made confidently, with no apparent intentions of it being some toss-off or fan-only disc. But by album's end, don't be surprised if you're reaching for "Citrus" to dive back into their dream world.

There's a difference between a damn fine song and the brilliance that made up Stevens's previous two releases, Illinois and Seven Swans. Unfortunately, The Avalanche clunks through track after track of damn fine songs while only rarely hitting these moments that make your body tingle in euphoria.

Like the band members themselves, Alpinisms is full of promise and obvious talent but would benefit from a more clearly defined direction.

If you have the time to dedicate to these genre-bending excursions, the effort can be worth it more often than not.

Clor has a number of entertaining and inviting songs in the final tracks, but nothing that quite lives up to first four tracks.

It plays more like an album reminiscent of the days when hip-hop was something to catch a head nod instead of breaking new ground or shaking the dance floor.

Far too often [Karin's] voice is put through a vocoder, multi-tracked, and treated by various other electronic procedures. The result is that one of the group's main talents is stifled and limited.

For dedicated adherents, A Friend Of A Friend is an essential part of the Rawlings-Welch story, but casual listeners should stick with 2001’s high water-mark "Time (The Revelator)."

While there are some great moments and promising songs, the album is hindered by its refusal to either commit to a sound or commit to trying new things. The tone of the album seems indecisive, and Ghost ends up marginalizing its own strengths.

When the record's not playing, it's hard to miss it, and the tracks that aren't standouts are simply boring.

Had this been Dilated's second album, I probably would have found it a lot more entertaining. But it's not, and the moments of originality were few.

Wild Young Hearts shows a young band still unsure of what to do with itself (Brit-pop, Motown, electroclash, something else?) but sure that its lead singer is pretty great. And for now, that’s working well enough.

The most impressive part of this album is that, throughout its entire tuneless, dissonant thirty-three-minute duration, Human Animal is rarely boring; it's filled with cool sounds.

Not quite poppy and not quite moody, there's just not enough feeling in any direction to really make it stick.

Charmed and Strange, however, is a collection of interesting guitar playing with a few lyrics thrown in for pop legitimacy.

A polite, undemanding excursion--frustratingly stuck to its own sonic landscape.

Everything Now doesn’t stretch out so much as it spreads itself thin, which is why it won’t ripple out like other Arcade Fire records. In the end, the band that made neighborhoods sound endless makes Everything into a cul-de-sac.

Champ might have its fair share of weak spots (basically the back third), yet it's another proficient album from one of the more (still) promising young bands around.

If that presentation doesn't always hit the mark, the sentiment behind it often does, and the album never completely derails.