Colors is the opposite of The Information. The first time you listen to it, you know its average and you keep listening, begging it to give something that hasn’t had its edges shaved off by a production style that strips all weird aesthetics in favor of aerodynamics that no one wanted and no one will like.

Throughout ColleGrove, the dominant statement that seems to be made is one of discordancy and dullness. Wherever these two succeed, there is always an antithesis to mute the momentum.

It’s not breaking news that reunion music isn’t a revelation, but this album seems worse than the merely dull crop of new Owen material.

For an album that embraces the theme of technology, Beta Love sounds stuck in the past, belonging to an era in which the novelty of overusing the synthesizer has not yet worn off.

[Angel Haze is] disappointing, misguided, flaccid.

As their original creative well starts to run dry, Relaxer’s experimentalism suggests that Alt-J will continue to struggle with other styles.

While Space Project ultimately feels more like a noble failure than an attempted Record Store Day cash-in, its general lack of wonderment adds little to the imaginative legacy of Carl Sagan and the Voyager Golden Record.

This is Diamandis’ break-up album in more ways than the romantic sense. She also severs ties with popular expectation, and the end result is regressive rather than revolutionary.

Lurching drum-machine beats, gentle piano chords, and somber string arrangements form the musical groundwork upon which Albarn sighs about the encroaching dominance of technology. If you’re the kind of person who shares this worldview, you may find Everyday Robots an often lovely demonstration of post-millennium tension. If not, the album’s monotony can fast become punishing.

An impenetrable, overwrought, hit-and-miss product marred by ego.

Not To Disappear is an intermittently pretty affair with painfully little substance, an album that spends so much time wallowing in its own self-indulgent loneliness that it fails to offer up anything listeners can actually relate to.

Ostensibly their pop record, this brisk, 29-minute album album runs out of ideas in the first ten.

Forest Swords' second record is simplistic on purpose, but that doesn’t make it feel less empty.

She needs great material and she needs star power. But this album doesn’t have great songs, and the only thing that’s changed shape more than an R&B hit in recent years is the definition of star power.

Heard consecutively, these songs sound disappointingly like one another, and while one good belter about the pain of unrequited love is a blessing, nine in a row turns out to be real drag.

Mechanical Bull is the sound of Kings of Leon de-fanged, de-crowned, and de-throned, further evidence of their inexorable slide towards artistic irrelevance.

Smith plays it safe, joining the growing crop of British talent with big voices and little personalities. At least he sounds pleasant though.

The album’s 12 bloated, mostly mid-tempo tracks drone on and on, and even when they aren’t technically long they sometimes feel like they might never end because most of them fail to find a hook.

It starts off brilliantly, but by the end of twelve tracks, it tapers off into an incessant and increasingly underwhelming performance.

Nobody’s asking Kings of Leon to reinvent the wheel here, but they could at least make their hubcaps a bit flashier.

Once you’ve heard one track from Waterfall (ideally “Salt Carousel”), you’ve pretty much heard them all, and while such a lack of variety might not be a nuisance to a live audience, it’s a problem when a four-song, fifteen-minute EP already feels a little stale halfway through.

Almost thirty producers were affiliated with the album, yet the music is shockingly simple.

Have Fun With God has greatest potential as nap music on long bus rides, but is otherwise only listenable in the context of its source material.

It’s characterised by the same confused nature that marred much of their last LP--hurtling from one style to the other but mostly falling short of what they’ve previously achieved.

What’s unfortunate is that songs the group co-wrote are the weakest ones here. The exception is the aforementioned lead single, a Journey-inspired ballad that’s catchy regardless of how much my instincts demand instant dismissal. The other slower, anthemic numbers on the album are not nearly as inspired.

It’s well-produced, clean and unobjectionable. Rennen fits this bill nicely, if that’s what you’re looking for. But regardless of whether it’s something you want, it’s nothing you need.

Here, as he seemingly aims for something like hard-won, grizzled wisdom, he often trips over his own lyrical ambition.

Although the overall album lacks cohesion, Double Dutchess’ sonic diversity does remind you of Fergie’s versatility as a performer, one who spits, warbles, and belts all across the project. The only thing is, she brings little innovation or excitement to the many genres she channels.

Prism does have two bright moments of success when everything comes together and we get a glimpse of the better-written album that could have been. First is opener “Roar.”... Meanwhile, on the mostly lackluster Side B, there’s another empowerment anthem, “Love Me,” that’s the polar opposite of “Roar” in nearly every other way.

Grab a latte and strap on your headphones, lovebirds--it’s about to get soft rock up in here.

In trying so desperately to be universal, they’ve ended up with their most stiflingly insular album yet.

Secondhand Rapture was inconsistent and uneven at points, but it also drew some power from its unpredictability. Its successor is twelve straight tracks of mostly the same thing: worn pop clichés. This dullness plagues the album from start to finish despite Plapinger’s best attempts at shouting through the monotony.

Where Fade Away really falls flat is how it lethargically, circularly insists upon the hopelessness of Consentino’s problems without elaboration. Instead, it fumbles for anecdotes that undersell what should be highly relatable emotions.

The fun here is manufactured beyond belief, sometimes for better, but more often for worse.

Some passable stuff here, mostly confined to the second half.

As much as you care and as much as you want to feel sad, you can’t be blamed if after a listen or two, all you feel is manipulated.

It finds Prince embracing EDM and his band 3rd Eye Girl lays down some sturdy, derivative grooves that ought to signal bathroom breaks and beer runs at shows to come.

The New Classic, though stacked from top to bottom with an impressive collection of production efforts, is nothing more than derivative delivery soaked in stylistic heresy.

Largely embarrassing, Bangerz is the most fun when it’s so ridiculous that criticism seems futile.

The end result is 40 minutes of music that drain the listener’s energy and will.

Instead of utilizing the talented crew’s many particular strengths to create a unique and unified sound, The Fool comes out feeling like nobody in particular and everyone at once.

Education only teaches us that the band was at it’s best when they were merely predicting a riot instead of trying to lead one.

A couple of pseudo-anthems will likely nurse them through a handful of unearned headline gigs--but in all honesty, the world has no need for pop music this faceless, listless or sterile.

Trainor recycles the themes from every forgettable Billboard alumnus from the past decade, with a bit more color here and there, but not enough to distinguish herself from the pack.

Almost nothing about it works.

The one redeeming quality behind this whole project is Cyrus’ twangy voice, which saves this project from being entirely pointless. In her lower registers, Cyrus draws you into her husk and warmth. It is in these moments she reveals the traces of an artist who otherwise remains absent from this album.

There’s a lack of personal narrative or identity on Rodeo, and Scott will often overcompensate for the hollowness of his music.

The eleven tracks on the album, while almost uniformly unpleasant, all share an underlying moroseness sewn together by Bianca Casady’s unnerving vocals.

It’s dripping with oldness, but it’s far from good.

Frustratingly, a few of the songs on Eclipse really do hit that arena-pop bullseye, but stacked alongside so many other songs mining the same territory, they become irritating by association.

This LP is as sterilized and recycled as the pop gunk that the band profess to loathe.

The generalized lyrics shrouded in reverb protect Richie by rendering anything he sings as essentially useless.

Ultimately, the highlights here are still middling fare, and mostly, I just couldn’t wait for Recess to be over.

The music isn’t as good as it was, sure, but what’s truly maddening is his apparent indifference to his own decline.

There’s nothing even remotely inventive here.

This is a mess of an indie pop album, filled to the brim with ambient interludes and a taste for unnecessary drum machines, but a mess that longs to make sense of itself.

Wilder Mind, airless to the extreme, plods on, song after saccharine song. Melodies do abound. But they’re wearying, like the mundane hell of children’s tunes, blasted on repeat, throughout a long car trip.

A hodgepodge of bland, rehashed, vanilla indie-rock, scarred by woefully inept lyrics, and completely lacking any of the infectious melodies and choruses that bolstered their debut.

The real embarrassment is that more than the work of his peers or his idols, mostly Pharrell’s just ripping off himself to seriously diminished returns.