While the results aren’t exactly groundbreaking, they're undeniably loose, spirited and just plain fun.

In its reverential tone and the sheer joy expressed by Clapton and the all-star collection of session men joining him, the album proves utterly incongruous with the form it champions.

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

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.

That's the problem with Skull Ring: It's the work of an artist who should be looking within himself to create a modern-may masterpiece, rather than trying to catch a spark from either his chart-topping successors or the band he once fronted so triumphantly. Both acts, in their way, give a whiff of desperation.

It’s official: The robots have won.

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.

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

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

Dead Cities reinforces the French pair's penchant for distorted vocals and cheesy synthesizers, but the tracks here ultimately add up to far less than the sum of their assorted parts.

Feels stuck in a holding pattern.... A misfire from a talented band.

Nightfreak is imbued with an appealing, frantic punk energy, but hamstrung by third-rate Zappa lyrics.

To the 5 Boroughs is continuously distracted from its titular dedication by political concerns, severely dampening not only its replay factor but also proving to be the least fun album the normally surefire trio has made.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Much of The Cure slogs along at the same churning, monotonous pace, and Smith, rambling in a croak-shout variation of his normal singing voice, does the material few favors.

Without interesting stories to tell, it all feels like an empty-calorie exercise in vapid songcraft.

More a novelty than an essential addition to the Dismemberment Plan legacy.

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

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.

Too many of the tracks on Some Devil simply take longer than needed (five minutes on average) to reach their conclusion, most running out of gas somewhere around the three-and-a-half minute mark.