For better or worse, RJD2’s talent is beat-making. While it’s easy to applaud him for following his dreams, we can’t give him extra marks for his output.

Kingdom Come is exactly the kind of rote product Jay-Z seemed to want to avoid when he "retired": It's a victory lap without a victory, a rare instance of a rap superstar blowing his own horn and yet sounding half-hearted about it.

Ultimately, they don't come across as unbearably pretentious so much as just really, really misguided.

With all due respect to Mr. Albini, perhaps it’s time Nastasia broadened her collaborative horizons.

The Outsider is a mix tape. The artful flow that defined Endtroducing and The Private Press has been eschewed in favor of individual tracks, and the album succeeds or fails along these lines.

It's hard not to like music this well-ordered and composed, but in the end it sounds as if The Album Leaf has taken a break on innovation and is settling for being derivative -- of itself.

The most frustrating aspect of Idlewild is its lack of energy.

How We Operate earns points for stylistic adventurousness but, unlike In Our Gun, doesn’t meet its self-imposed challenge with the strongest batch of tunes.

The back end of the album trundles along, failing to rival the opening energy or offer anything as interesting as the non-anthemic detours.

Omnibus is more a historical artifact for the Decemberists completist than a riveting overview of a criminally neglected band from the late ’90s.

It's difficult to listen to the album without coming away with the impression that it should really be two different records. Casablancas' disaffected monotone increasingly seems to belong on a different record from the assured sounds of a band slowly feeling its way out of its pigeonhole.

A grab-bag assemblage that simply doesn’t flow together very well.

Rehearsing My Choir is too self-consciously hip to be a twilight reflection on things past and is filled with personal asides only blood relatives can relate to.

Sadly, Tanglewood Numbers just doesn’t sport enough memorable Bermanisms to make it a truly satisfying Silver Jews album.

The pair overextend themselves often enough to appear to be posturing, costing them some of their charm.

Unmemorable and inoffensive, Death Cab has gone from oddball indie-pop kids to mature professionals who now have a lot more people counting on their success.

Barring a few notable exceptions, these are the songs that either weren’t good enough or didn’t fit into any of the New Jersey-based group’s proper releases.

JackInABox lacks the consistent flow of The Optimist LP and doesn’t match the sturdy songcraft of Ether Song.

At times, Callahan's penchant for clever phrasings gets the better of him.

Lack of energy and a dearth of hooks adds up to one of the most tepid releases Matthews and his crew have released.

Cold Roses’ first set is by-the-numbers, brokenhearted MOR fare, sometimes maudlin (“When Will You Come Back Home?”), infrequently dramatic (the piano-driven “How Do You Keep Love Alive”) and mostly forgettable. The second disc redeems Cold Roses from an even-less-enthusiastic recommendation.

By the halfway point, it becomes too easy to zone out and for the music to fade into the background.

Despite obvious talent and wit, it fails to leave more than a marginal impression.

Black Sheep Boy has bold ambitions, but Okkervil River hasn’t quite reached the point where polished execution equals or surpasses preliminary concept.

It’s official: The robots have won.

Space-rock aficionados will dig the zero-G atmosphere, but it meanders through excessive pockets better left unexplored.

Worlds Apart is the first TOD album that sounds like it was influenced by a marketing department.

Razorlight is more than The Strokes, London Bureau -- all nervous guitar lines and neither-here-nor-there bar-hopping energy -- but what's left of the mucho-hyped UK outfit's identity feels second-hand borrowed, as well.