This problematic arrival shows too in the final product, but the problem may not be the much maligned rapper's ability or inspiration but the constant mishandling of his material. So many prime street cuts have been given away to comps, mixtapes, and soundtracks in the five years since Kiss of Death was released that only the slick, polished numbers remain.

Other than the hypnotic 'Work' and the playfully geeky 'Hazel,' the set is punchless, more a pleasant mood album fit for casual background listening, lacking the unnerved tension that runs through the majority of "Last Exit" and "So This Is Goodbye."

It's pleasant enough, particularly when the breathy vocals fade away to leave behind cascades of guitars, but even at its best, it's nothing more than an approximation of Smashing Pumpkins at their peak, with all the interesting parts stripped away.

Metamorphosis has a dire determination to its purported good times, its riffs grinding instead of greasy, its rhythms clenched where they should be loose.

Maybe it's a clue that Jones has already moved on and that there's not much here to get excited about, past some high-powered singles.

The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies) is a mess of pop/dance/rap crossover.

No one should have expected getting Blood from a Stone to be easy, but it's a shame it had to be this much of a chore.

If Morello and Riley hadn't been involved in such great projects before, this would be acceptable, but in hindsight, it doesn't really live up to their past accomplishments.

Enigk's undeniably rich and powerful voice has never sounded better, and his enigmatic lyrics remain resplendent with biblical imagery and magnetic poetry-engineered spiritual vagaries, but in removing the complex arrangements that have haunted nearly every one of his post-Sunny Day projects, he's exposed his weakest batch of songs to date.

The textures are right but Our Lady Peace remain deficient in hooks and melodies, something that didn't matter as much when their sound boiled with indignation instead of merely simmering, as it does here.

A handful of ballads do add variety to the album's pace, but Owl City is largely a vehicle for the one song Adam Young knows how to make.

These Thieves do often come off as just another trendy outfit hawking tawdry 20-year time warps, albeit with more streamlined sonics than many.

This album ultimately emerges as an erratic project, its highlights spread too thinly to do much good.

Everything Goes Wrong is by no means a bad album, but there are other bands doing this same kind of thing, and doing it with better songs and a better sound.

Just about all of it is enjoyable, but not much of it sticks.

As David St. Hubbins said, "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever," and Saenz's locker-room humor wears thin quickly. Even cameos from Slipknot's Corey Taylor, Anthrax's Scott Ian, Nelson's Matt Nelson, the Donnas' Allison Robertson and Brett Anderson, and the Darkness' frontman Justin Hawkins can't keep the same dick joke interesting for 40 minutes straight.

It's a Business Doing Pleasure with You bristles with Kroeger's barely veiled, unwitting hostility, something that the big-hearted McGraw doesn't wear well--not in the least, because it sounds like a boneheaded swipe at his jetsetting wife Faith Hill--and it's something he wisely side-steps on the rest of the record, choosing to mine a sentimental, meditative vein, musing on major changes in his life and wondering what will happen after he's gone.

Some of McKnight's devoted fanbase will find the album rather fascinating since it's a change of pace, more a collection of loose sketches than a highly polished set.

It's all pleasing enough, flowing better than the American Songbook albums, and not feeling as karaoke as the Rock album, but it's so comfortable, so easygoing, it verges on the forgettable.

Carrie takes a much stronger presence as a writer here, co-authoring seven of the 13 songs, and she's attracted to hookless showstoppers designed to showcase her powerful voice, all glory notes with no glory. When she sticks to tunes written solely by the professionals, Play On does have some slick pleasures.

Nothing here is quite an embarrassment, but compared to his other albums of this nature, including the muddled World of Morrissey, there's a distinct lack of humor and hooks, or anything else memorable.

OneRepublic adds many production flourishes to their second album Waking Up: sawing strings, children's choirs, minor-key piano, cavernous U2 reverb, long ponderous instrumental sections of piano and orchestra duets, a title track that bears echoes of the Killers.

This kind of "redo-the-hits" project--very common from veteran artists in the 21st century--is almost always a mixed bag, and Never Been Gone is no exception.

There are some surprises on Mudvayne, like a surprisingly Slash-like guitar solo on "Closer" and the death metal intro to the Slipknot-esque "I Can't Wait," but too much of it is more of the same from the band and its genre.

The limited palette and relentless attack wind up a little wearying, especially when married to brickwalled masters.

It would be too optimistic to hope that the band would have ever made a record as vital and thrilling as Hold on Now, it’s just too bad that they’ve sunk to the level of bland irrelevance so quickly.

On Idol, McPhee always favored middle of the road over modern, and Unbroken returns her to that course, bringing her somewhere within the vicinity of Paula Cole (who co-writes the title track), Rachael Yamagata (who co-writes “Keep Drivin’”) and Mandy Moore’s stylized ‘70s throwback, flavored with the slightest traces of modern sounds, including a vague borrowing of Beyoncé phrasing.

While it’s easy to admire his well-cultivated classicism, Who I Am is an awkward growth spurt, relying on songs designed as grooves but given performances too hemmed-in to be soulful and often undone by Nick’s thin teenage yelps.

In the 40-odd minutes that follow, the sisters' simplistic, repetitious song structures may start to grow stale, and their fine but unfussy folk instrumentalism may seem less than inspiring, but those harmonies are never far from hand, ensuring that The Big Black and the Blue is never less than an entirely pleasant listening experience.

The sisterly harmonies and country-tinged arrangements are pleasant enough, but they focus on atmosphere at the expense of melody, a move that leaves the listener emotionally stirred but unable to recall a single melody after the disc’s conclusion.

Everybody’s got to miss sometime, and on Haywire, Turner does by a mile, despite his no doubt good intentions in taking some of the slickness off the contemporary country sound.

Fixin' the Charts really comes down to the jokes and the concept--how much you appreciate it will depend on how much the idea appeals to you in the first place, and how well you can tolerate Argos' sung/spoken/ranted vocal approach, but it's definitely good for at least a chuckle.

Grubbs comes one step closer to turning Almost Everything I Wish I’d Said into the underground equivalent of Parachute’s "Losing Sleep" or the Fray’s "How to Save a Life." He doesn't quite get there, perhaps, but the attempt still has some tuneful moments.

Looking for a testosterone-heavy rock album that is 100 percent ballad-free? Airbourne have created quite an offering — in the form of No Guts. No Glory.

The sleek dancefloor track “So Many Girls,” one of a few songs in which Usher sounds dead in the eyes, going through the motions, desensitized by the bounty of women at his feet, is followed by the sarcastically titled “Guilty,” where he whines “I guess I’m guilty for wanting to be up in the club” — which warrants a response like “Yes, attached 31-year-old man, that’s correct.” A few songs before that is a quasi-redemptive ballad “Foolin’ Around”; he humbles himself, seems to take responsibility for his actions, then casually drops “Guess that’s just the man in me, blame it on celebrity.”

If you heard Mankind without hearing their other work, you might think it was a decent record with a couple of memorable songs--kind of generic and bland, but not awful. It’s only a disaster if you were charmed by High Places' original sound and left cold by their new approach.

It's hard to find fault with the album's intricate arrangements and top notch production, but the songs, which rarely change key, begin to congeal into one big independent film trailer montage as the record progresses.

Pond still fills his lyrics with snark and deadpan cynicism, a move that gives complexity to his otherwise soothing music, but even that has gotten old by now, and The Dark Leaves rarely distinguishes itself from the music that came before it.

Not that dignity was ever that important to Meat Loaf, but the shallow spectacle of Hang Cool Teddy Bear lacks the absurd joy of his best: you can hear everybody involved working far too hard to achieve next to nothing.

Champ is still a melodic, eclectic record, but it often feels like the work of some other band.

Uffie’s long-delayed debut looks to be filled with excitement, but rarely has an album sounded so unconcerned.

The results of that effort are apparent, and they're not good. Gray wields one of the most naturally talented voices in R&B, but from the evidence here, she's not a songwriter.

Chemical Brothers have remained in the stadium house category for a decade-plus due to their immersive music and vivid light shows, but from the stale beats and lack of new ideas on display here, they'd do better going beatless or hiring a drummer.

Custom Built is odds-and-ends masquerading as a new album, rounding up brand-new cuts and leftovers from Michaels' unheralded pre-Rock of Love 2000s.

It's a bit of a surprise that this album sounds like a watered-down diluted Urban Hymns, with all the romantic darkness turned into something cheerfully dippy.

While this hardly supplants those originals, Spot the Difference is a fun spin for the devoted and a good advertisement for Squeeze's reunion tour, proving they still have the knack to entertain.

The album is certainly more in vogue than Tell It to the Volcano--its blippy keyboards and amorphous arrangements sound very 2010--but that doesn't keep it from sounding less gratifying than the band's debut, which prized a good pop hook above all else.

The album itself is almost incidental to the self-styled fantasy that Katy Perry sells with this entire project.

The problem is, the subdued rhythms, riffs, and raps of A Thousand Suns wind up monochromatic, an impression not erased by the brief bridges between songs, sampled speeches, and easy segues, every element retaining moodiness without offering distinction.

Most of the album stays sludgy though, and Seeing Eye Dog tends to drag more than it hits.

Invented, as tuneful as it may be, still plays an odd role in Jimmy Eat World's discography, since it can't quite figure out how to transcend a genre -- one that Jimmy Eat World helped invent, no less -- that exclusively caters to younger listeners.

On tracks like "Point Me At Lost Islands," where weather metaphors share equal space with acoustic guitars and fiddle solos, the group manages to shake out the doldrums and hit a genuine stride. But the rest of the album doesn't flow so well, and The Place We Ran From winds up amounting to far less than the sum of its parts.

Gonzales isn't an innovative dance producer, and there's not much pop music in play here either, making Ivory Tower a rather run-of-the-mill soundtrack--one of the many that can't be separated from their films.

While it's important to have ambition, Deluca probably should have stuck to the sound he does so well. His desire to stretch makes We Can't Fly a misfire of an album. It would have made a nice EP though.

It's a macho, muscular attack that fits the braggadocio of the title yet it's hard not to shake that this alt-metal grind feels like a forewarning of a Y2K annihilation, not something suited for a decade into the new millennium.

Ultimately, the EP is fast and fun, but its songs are so fleeting that even if the concept is a cool idea, the end result is too disjointed to be anything more than a one-listen novelty.

Released two years after the international breakthrough hit Only by the Night, Come Around Sundown continues Kings of Leon's journey into the upper echelon of mainstream pop/rock, with super-sized choruses and guitar heroics thrown in for good measure.

The Incredible Machine is a collection of (mostly) competent if unremarkable songs, held together by slick -- often sterile -- production.

Fly Me to the Moon, Rod Stewart's fifth collection of American pop standards, finds him singing such classics as That Old Black Magic, I've Got You Under My Skin, Beyond the Sea, Fly Me to the Moon, and Moon River.

If you were figuring that the Murderdolls were going to expand musically upon what they laid down on their debut album, Women and Children Last will prove your assumption wrong--they're sticking as close to their original vision as possible.

At its best, History of Modern is to OMD what Secrets is to the Human League: an inspired return from post-punk-turned-synth-pop greats.

These United States are trying to transport the listener back to a conversation among a group of weed-smoking flower children circa 1971/1972, but lyrically, they continue to miss the mark and end up sounding pretentious instead. Nonetheless, they do have an appealing sense of melody, and despite this album's shortcomings, one doesn't want to give up on These United States just yet.

The Brooklyn lovebirds stick to what they do best on their third album, which reprises the formula that made their previous record, Grand, an underground success.

For the most part, The Gift is indeed predictable in its sound--a continuation of the glassy, stately march of I Dreamed a Dream--and songs, relying on carols, not secular seasonal tunes.

Ultimately, All the Women I Am it falls flat; it feels awkward in its stylistic mimicry, and has no center.

The Postelles (who produced the remaining tracks themselves) spend most of their time re-creating Is This It? with scrubbed-up, squeaky-clean results. Ultimately, that's where the album fails.

In the end, this is the same mixed bag as last time round with a half point subtracted for diminishing returns, and another half point subtracted for lessons not learned.

Neither redemptive nor triumphant, No Mercy is the MC's least compelling release thus far, but there's a sense that he'll regain focus once his legal matters settle.

At the very least, the album doesn't tarnish his legacy, although it adds nothing to it either.

If she had the right co-writers, the kind who could pull melodies out of her sincere strumming and down-home jamming -- the kind the whole American Idol empire was designed to bring into the equation -- Farmer's Daughter would deliver on Bowersox's promise instead of sounding like a local singer/songwriter performing on a stage she's too modest to fill.

Her follow-up isn't merely eager to stand out but rather desperate, as if the studios in which it was recorded contained a clock counting down to the point of failure, the moment when Hilson would no longer stand a chance of being a ubiquitous, multi-platinum superstar.

Steel Magnolia are an able, energetic, vocally savvy country pop act, and stress the word pop in that phrase.

Performances are generally middling, but a few songs show a glimmer of the band's former jagged glory.

Although recorded with Midlake (the band even shares billing in the album's title), it feels more like a solo release, lacking both the cohesion of a proper lineup and the checks-and-balances system that Grant's former bandmates provided.

The band should probably have just stuck to cranking out straightforward emo pop/rockers and let Cook's voice do the heavy lifting.

It would be easy to interpret Sun Bronzed Greek Gods as overly processed or too insincere, but the songs' bright textures, insistent beats, and sweet harmonies make them very buttery to the palate. Sometimes, that's enough.

He also leans a bit too heavily on co-producer Clint Lagerberg, who wrote Rascal Flatts' chart-topping "Here Comes Goodbye" but fails to bring similar hitmaking hooks to Kelley's table, and his vocals sound forced, with a deep baritone twang replacing the breathy croon he used on earlier albums.

Even if there's a fair amount of affected British accents and overdriven guitars, it's a far cry from the mall-punk rebellion of Underclass Hero, the melodramatic bombast flavored with metallic flecks and solipsistic acoustic pity, all giving Screaming Bloody Murder a grander, richer palette than any other Sum 41 record.

It's style for miles and miles unencumbered by hooks and accentuated by an attitude that carefully practices disdain for its audience, so if you're not inclined to buy into their gait there's not much reason to stick around.

It's pretty much what you'd expect, which makes it both essential for Of Montreal devotees and nothing all that special.

The 12 songs on All Things Bright and Beautiful, Owl City's third album, certainly demand the audience's imagination -- or at least their willingness to go along with the world Adam Young dreams up, a cartoonish place where the skies look like alligators, the rivers taste like fruit, and emeralds poke their heads out of every rock.

Amazing as the music consistently is, however, it can't overcome this album's primary liability, which is Martyn's atrocious singing.

Perhaps if he were a more skilled producer and arranger, things would have been better. Unfortunately, his style comes off more like sub-Enya with a beard than a true studio wizard.

Guitarists Jake Pitts and Jinxx are the showstealers here, riffing in constant harmony, and incorporating the speedy guitar pyrotechnics of similar-minded bands like Dragonforce and Escape the Fate while throwing in showy Zack Wilde pinch harmonics, and Yngwie Malmsteen sweeps.

Viva Voce's 2011 release The Future Will Destroy You is an expansive and somewhat slow-burning mix of the indie rock, psych rock, and pop sounds they've delved into over the years.

Unfortunately, the lack of powerful hooks, either in the melodies or riffs, means that all that coloring is on a grayscale, keeping Time of My Life a muted black-and-white exercise in half-hearted soul-searching.

Universal Pulse can be wearying even at its half-hour length.

Functions more as a sign of what's to come, setting Greyson up for a better album somewhere further down the road.

This is suburban middle-aged music dressed up as something younger, something more exotic, something far more street-wise and interesting than it actually is.

Without many radio-worthy cuts and both Shawty Redd and Drumma Boy going through their B-list of beats, Ferrari Boyz isn't impactful enough to make it past the already converted, but that "street release" tag should have already given that up.

The problem with Jeff Bridges is, it sounds like he's trying hard to be cool, and that's all down to T-Bone Burnett, who dampens everything natural about this music with the artificially authentic.

These fleeting glimpses of originality aren't enough to save the album, though, and until Olsen discovers his own voice, you'd be better served by listening to music by the artists he borrows from so heavily.

While their play-it-safe approach may mean they're less likely to suffer the rapid sales decline of their contemporaries, they are now in danger of becoming indie pop's answer to Westlife.

Perhaps if the album actually had some kineticism to its eclecticism, or at least a hook or a tune, it would earn its wannabe evangelism, but the untrammeled indulgence turns this into a gaudy multicolored circus.

All admirable attempts at honesty, yet these confessionals bear an uncomfortable resemblance to Lindsay Lohan's autobiographical A Little More Personal (Raw).

Disappointingly, it's a much slicker but ultimately formulaic affair which appears to tick every current, chart-friendly sound going.

MacFarlane and McNeely don't attempt to ape the pizzazz of Frank's Reprise years, nor do they spend much time with May's snazzy snap, they stick with Riddle and Jenkins, keeping things sentimental and lush even when the words crackle with wit.

McCartney's music is appropriately romantic, sometimes to the extent that the moments intended to convey creeping tension or sadness bounce with a joyous gait.