The band doesn't exactly have a lot of new ideas about what a rock song should sound like.

How did such a glam movie star turn into such a rinky-dink pop singer?

Break Up's nine songs have plenty of sweet harmonies, but there's just no sexual chemistry between these two friends.

This soundtrack would be a great bonus disc for the movie's eventual DVD release, but as a stand-alone it falls way short of their vastly superior debut album.

Tracks with Future and 2 Chainz highlight his limitations on the mic, and without the Dr. Luke-assisted buoyancy of 2012's Strange Clouds, the album falls flat--moments of well-meaning ambition not withstanding.

Wears thin long before its halfway mark.

We're placed squarely in Michael Jacksonland, a bizarre place where every sparkling street is computer-generated, every edifice is larger than life and every song is full of grandiose desperation.

Dull missteps such as "Sickalicious" and "Into You" show a lack of creative vision that stunts him when the hot beats run dry.

There are some decent pop moments: 'When I'm Gone' is a seize-the-day anthem with a cathartic refrain. But most songs, like the angry barnburner 'The End,' are barely distinguishable from a dozen or so other Warped Tour bands.

It could have stood to cut five or six entries, starting with “Memphis.” That would have left “Fuckin’ Up the Disco,” an homage to his own “Let the Groove Get In,” as the album’s opening track — a starting point that motions towards what does work about the album versus the places in which it completely falls flat.

This album sounds like his band's final aria--the death scene.

Dragged down by radio-courting melodies and ready-made rhymes, this album's first half is particularly calculated.

The songwriting remains basic, as always, and vocalist Sam Martin blandly belts "Lovers on the Sun" and the club hit "Dangerous." But the album sounds consistently great.

They're back with another dull slog through the AC/DC catalog.

Nine albums in, these Cali punks are coasting by on dourly told jokes and reheated mad-at-the-world bluster.

The quartet's first record in a decade is a surprisingly vital viva-la-grunge manifesto.

The 18 tracks of Beerbongs become an ouroboros of new-money narcissism: Post's obsession with flexing, partying, and banging groupies feeds a growing paranoia that the people around him only like him for exactly those attributes. And it is no small irony that the album's most convincing moments occur when he drops the cool rapper pretense and gets all lonesome cowboy.

His debut--a ho-hum jaunt through an America full of dog-eared Bibles, rugged pickup trucks and girls "hot as July, sweet as sunshine"--works overtime playing up his wide-eyed charm.

This is exactly the record you'd expect to hear from Weezy in 2013: a solid album by a brilliant MC who's half-interested.

Let's hope Nashville will take her back, and quick.

There are magical moments on Come Home the Kids Miss You to be found amidst a primal need to sex his female fans.

It's well-meaning, well-crafted and confused. Sometimes versatility can be a vice.

The killer swarm of 1994's Tical and Tical 2000's astro-black ambition aren't anywhere to be seen. [27 May 2004, p.80]

Instead of seeming angry or inspired, 311 just end up sounding like the pop world has passed them by.

With 15 cuts in all, the album sounds like the Dolls just threw everything they had against the charts to see if anything would stick.

He's a consummate crowd-pleaser, but he's best when he gets weird.

It runs a little thin over sixteen tracks.

He aspires to be more than the face of so-called "mumble rap." Yet Lil Boat 2's best moments are when he reverts to the familiar.