[Chad Kroeger's] shifting his band away from its antiquated post-grunge into a sound that is self-consciously fresher and mature. It's not only a commercially canny move, it generates the best Nickelback record to date.

Motley Crue has been trumpeting their hedonism for so long and so loudly that it's become more of a caricature than a way of life, and while Saints of Los Angeles is the best thing they've laid to tape since their codpiece heydays, it's more of a walk down memory lane/sunset strip than a legitimate call to arms.

It's not earth-shaking, but it's far better than nearly any other reunion of this kind.

Still, being 16 tracks long and Ross' second album of the year means mixtape gimmicks like "Heavyweight" ("I step into the ring/Ding! Ding!") get to graduate to an official track list and muddle up the flow. They only keep the often surprising Hood Billionaire off the top shelf of Ross releases, so bring some patience as this mixed bag is certainly worth sorting.

The good stuff is strong enough that anyone who cares about Lou Reed's body of work, or Edgar Allan Poe's literary legacy, ought to give it a careful listen.

Boomkatalog.One is a clever marriage of technology, creativity, and straight-up sass that gets away with being much more enjoyable than it might deserve.

Bieber definitely sounds more enthused by the original songs--some of which resemble everyday numbers with patched-on seasonal references--and a cover of Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" (featuring Carey herself). The versions of holiday staples are pulled off with varying results.

Cole's bars concentrate primarily on how far ahead of everyone else in the game he is and how his skills are unapproachable.

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.

Musically, the production never veers from the glossy, by-the-numbers approach of mainstream pop.

Theory of a Deadman (or just Theory, or TOAD) have never tried to disguise their commercial aspirations, which is probably why they continue to peddle platinum-selling wares, but the polish-to-passion ratio here feels way, way off.

It doesn't help that almost nothing about Unstoppable is modest, not the sounds, not the sentiments--only the songs, which can't withstand these muscle-bound arrangements.

This kind of loopy, poetic imagery is carried throughout all of Planta, and helps make it one of CSS's most creatively fertile and enjoyable pop organisms to date.

Apart from two minor issues, the Answer has the right sound and feel on Everyday Demons and that does make them the perfect opener for latter day AC/DC: they work as pleasant appetizer for the main course.

As a cold description, this modbilly beat sounds pretty interesting, especially because the group goes to great pains to rearrange many of its covers, but as an album Modbilly drags, offering endless permutations of the same plodding boogie.

It's overstuffed and bland at once, with some legitimately great production spoiled by vacant lyricism and lack of personality.

Music from Another Dimension! is no worse than Nine Lives. It may lack a single as immediate as "Fallin' in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)"--or the subsequent "Jaded" from 2001's Just Push Play--but it faithfully follows Aerosmith's '90s blueprint, getting nothing wrong but never quite feeling right.

The occasional burst of incredible, disposable pop goes a long way, but sadly not long enough to make Christopher an entirely engaging experience.

ong for song, Merry Christmas, Baby is very much of a piece with Rod's ongoing Great American Songbook series, with Stewart not straying from the familiar form of these songs and producer David Foster laying on all manner of soft, soothing sounds.

Daughtry has never allowed Daughtry to be silly before this record. This relative lightness makes a big difference--it also helps that the music itself is relatively nimble--and, ultimately, this turns Baptized into the best album he or his band has made.

A surprising amount of funky electro helps separate this groovemaster from the competition.

Despite the occasional lyrical misstep, Jesus Is King is a wonder of production, housing some of West's most focused and inspired work since 2013's Yeezus.

In the City gets by on hooks and hugeness, like an irony-free Andrew W.K., Timbaland working with Aerosmith, or a jaded version of the Jonas Brothers now willing to drop the F-bomb.

Without strong rhythmic or melodic hooks, the album's slow grooves blend together and Jackson disappears into the productions.

For all their well-crafted ambition on Chronicles, "I Just Wanna Live" feels like Good Charlotte's centerpiece, since it's spiked with rock power, but gets its soul from the pop life they lead.

Rather than moving through a broad palette of sounds, moods, tempos, and styles, the two British DJs choose to remain consistent, signaling the development of a signature style and a certain sense of confidence.

Underneath its aggressive opening and occasional woozy electronics, it is anchored by two or three songs (the exuberant "Fallinlove2nite," the recycled "This Could B Us," maybe the Graffiti Bridge throwback "Million $ Show") that wind up revealing how the rest of the record feels like little more than nimble calisthenics.

Most of Going Back is devoted to the tried and true, though, the hits that remain staples on oldies stations across the globe, and whenever Collins is singing "Heatwave," "Uptight," "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," "Jimmy Mack" or "Going to a Go-Go," the album inches away from being a labor of love and into pure nostalgia trip, but even then the album is pleasant enough that it's hard to complain.

This is surf music for street goths and beach bums with bad attitudes.

A case of too little, too late, nothing on Moving Units' full-length debut Dangerous Dreams does anything to disprove the feeling that the dance-punk scene is at best overcrowded and at worst approaching rigor mortis any day now.

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.

The Black Album feels like the most fully realized latter-day Weezer album: it may flagrantly draw from old and new elements of pop culture, yet it belongs to its own feverish world.

Ballads have always been his forte, a convenient vehicle for his quivering sensitivity and accidental melodicism, yet it's still startling how slow The Illusion of Progress unfolds, as Staind rarely muster the energy to move beyond midtempo even when they deign to crank up their amps for anthems of mild alienation or vague inspiration.

Jake may be the weak link, but he merely reveals how the whole band seem to have learned their moves from watching late-night concerts on Palladium while buying pre-worn vintage-styled T's at Urban Outfitters. For the band and audience alike, Greta Van Fleet is nothing more than cosplay of the highest order.

Witness is a conceptual muddle but that incoherence could've been excused if there were hooks in either its grooves or melodies. Instead, Witness is populated with busy, tuneless tracks that seemed designed to pulsate in the background of a regrettable night.

The album is a major production.

Add Kahne's instantly accessible production and Light is not only a welcome surprise, but an album that matches his debut.

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.

Resilience mostly lives up to the promise of its moniker, delivering another well-executed, purely fan-centric collection of testosterone-fueled, post-grunge/processed metal jams with a complete disregard for subtlety.

Reincarnated the album is all heart and heart-in-the-right-place, threatening to mash up the system without ever even harshing the mellow.

Smart, moving, approachable, and well constructed, Nightbird is Erasure's mature masterpiece.

Since the beats are monotonous, since the songs are insipid and forgettable, since the girls not only can't sing but have no on-record charisma, since there's no sense of style and, most importantly, sense of fun to this whole enterprise, Dangerous and Moving is the worst kind of pop music: the kind that is better to theorize about than to listen to.

We Don't Have to Whisper is too doggedly dour and amorphous to be more than a curiosity.

That material ["Like A Drum"], as well as much of what surrounds it, is significantly less substantive than the singer's past work.

Sure, as sheer sound, it's executed well -- more assured, musical, and, well, professional than any of their other albums, their age lending them a dexterity absent in their hits -- but the deliberate retro-rage begs the question: who exactly is this music for?

It will seduce anybody already won over by his 2005 debut, "Back to Bedlam," since it's a tighter, more assured record than that. But chances are, they were seduced by Blunt already.

Even if it is not as original or wildly thrashin' as the first album, Post-Mortem is still a decent follow-up, especially considering that Black Tide are still only in their teens.

They don't expand their horizons, preferring to stick to the hyper-charged British indie they minted with their 2014 debut, The Balcony.

Backed by stale songs, formulaic arrangements, and mediocre songwriting, Williams is forced to rely on his volcanic personality to bring this album across -- and despite a few strong performances, he sinks into lame self-parody time and time again.

There's nothing preventing them from indulging in the silliest rhymes, baffling name-drops, nagging hooks, and earworm melodies.

They execute it all with a fullness of sound and compelling melodic content that pulls the listener in, almost as surely as any first-rate opera.

With friends and collaborators surgically removed, Faith is littered with jarring voices, avaricious creative decisions, and a fundamental sidelining of its visionary figurehead.

When they're on a roll, Guantanamo Baywatch deliver some ripping surf tunes, and they clearly know how to deliver a good time with a beat you can dance to, but Chest Crawl is never quite as exciting as it wants to be, and the flat, confined sound of the audio doesn't help one bit.

Rundgren is pushing the edges of his comfort zone just enough to keep himself stimulated while offering enough melody to satisfy those fans whose concentration usually drifts whenever he wanders, and the result is an imperfect but satisfying art-pop album.

Consistency is a virtue in this case: maybe Starr does little more than deliver what he promises, but he does deliver, and that reliability is a comfort in times of uncertainty.

But even if Every Man for Himself was constructed with the mainstream in mind, it likely won't win any new converts, since at their core Hoobastank remains unchanged: their songs aren't particularly dynamic or catchy, the band doggedly follows alt-rock conventions as if adherence to clichés gives the group legitimacy, and Robb's pedestrian voice alternately disappears into the mix or veers flat when he holds a note.

Palookaville could stand one more trimming pass, but it gives Cook's canon the needed depth.

Seems slickly over-produced and a little forced.

Though this album shows that Japanese Motors are on to something good, they'd be a lot better if they tried just a little harder.

Dramatic and sweeping, the Las Vegas band works in the same vein as pop giants Coldplay, offering up track after track of hooky and emotional midtempo jams.

Young still doesn't do darkness as well as light but Mobile Orchestra shows a willingness to grow and change that makes it the most complete portrait of Owl City's music yet.

Make a Scene still provides a couple of gems, but it's hard to shake the feeling that she's now milked the whole dance-pop ice-maiden schtick well and truly dry.

The end result of this is an album that'll come as a blast from the past for the band's fans and should easily get heads nodding with its affably introspective lyrics and huge choruses.

This set makes one yearn for (some of) the prog excesses of old; Heaven & Earth is the most creatively challenged and energetically listless record in Yes' catalog.

Donda isn't without its highlights, but taken as a whole, it's both confused and confusing.

It might not be the worst Drake album, but it's in the conversation for sure.

Even if the songs on Walls aren't the most distinct or memorable, they come from a place of authenticity that's genuinely heartwarming and enjoyable. Like any other settled adult, he's perfectly content to stick to the reliable and Walls winds up being the most mature and natural of the ex-1D bunch.

Here was a chance to show that the music was worthy, too. With a singing style in the cockney accent of Lily Allen or Kate Nash, he differentiated himself from these singers by actually playing the guitar himself, with mixture of skiffle and ska

It's another conventional rock record, thrashing guitar hooks and throbbing bass lines are in place, but frontman Max Collins has lyrically improved.

Barely enough for five years of waiting and hardly up to the old standard.

There was a variety of styles on Trust Me, none of which detracted from its overall sense of cohesion.

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.

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.

Given Jones' legendary stature and reputation for taste, this set feels unnecessary at best, and downright cynical at worst.

It's not markedly different, better, or worse than previous BFS albums, with the main distinguishing factor being that there's nothing with a killer hook along the lines of "1985," but for the legions of faithful fans, more of the same isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Consider it the album before the album, and it plays out as interesting and often awesome, but put this next to his major works and it seems a bit off and quirky.

Double Dutchess couldn't possibly match the commercial success of The Dutchess, and much of it is merely adequate, but Fergie is demonstrably as energized, and having a ball with nothing left to prove.

Common's here to have a good time, no strings attached, with uneven results.

It's a decent set of modern R&B, dominated by seductive slow jams, that stimulates a little more often than it fades into the background.

It would be a good standard-issue Whitney album if it wasn't for her disarming, defensive attempt to defuse every rumor hurled in her direction.

Dig those snippets and Codename: Rondo just might be this weekend's soundtrack.

The muted analog production meeting with cartoonish arrangements and religious sentiments leave the album feeling like some kind of pleasant soundtrack to a Christian summer camp where Van Dyke Parks and Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes are the counselors.

Blockbusta is not without its instances of fun and excitement, but for the most part, Busta Rhymes sounds like he's reaching for something different on almost every track and not quite grabbing ahold of any of it.

It's an album of its time: it offers extravagance in the guise of self-help, which can be alluring in doses--especially those bizarre blues-rockers--but it's just too much of a very expensive yet not particularly tasteful thing.

POP ETC's vie for commercial radio appeal ends up feeling like watching your little brother come home from his first year of college trying on an overexcited new style, complete with awkward slang and ill-fitting fashions.

Not every DJ dream team is up to the challenge of creating great original tracks, though, and it's hard to criticize Swedish House Mafia when their mix is otherwise such a blast.

To a casual listener, it might be a little much, but considering the Pope released an album with an electric guitar, he deserves a little credit for having some edge. Whether listeners are religious or not, these are messages that are universally comforting in dark times.

Guest spots by Young Thug and the Weeknd inject some much-needed personality into Bad Habits, but it's not enough to save the album from its own blandness.

Unhip it may be by design, but at least Kris Allen delivers the goods: it’s tuneful and likeable, melodic enough to merit a close listen.

Only with "Who Want the Smoke?" does the first half rise above the preceding album, yet Yachty's the third wheel, eclipsed by verses from Cardi B and Offset. He's more at ease on the lightheaded "melodic" tracks of the latter half, back to goofy-vulgar observations, musical crib-mobile melodies, and occasional openhearted moments that sound natural rather than forced.

With just a few exceptions, The Midsummer Station's would-be mainstream anthems of youth, love, and longing come off generic, hollow, and barely enjoyable.

That he fails is not the fault of his individual performance; it's the fault of botched execution.

Until Morrison manages to infuse some of this raw honesty and emotion into his sound, he's always going to struggle to create that one great record that his impassioned and soulful voice deserves.

Beneath their poppier melodies and anthemic choruses underlies the D.I.Y. garage-rock ethic that inspired their quick ascent, and it's this mixture that places them firmly between the pop charts and dingy rock club basements.

It may be a spiritual cousin to Pinkerton, yet it's far removed from the raw, nervy immediacy of that album.... This has a lighter, brighter feel than any of its predecessors, not just in the music but in its outlook.

A knack for oversized choruses remains hardwired in Bon Jovi, but in this gloomy context, they act as reminders that they once sounded like they were a working band for working men instead of rich men fretting about a world they've long left behind.

Not terribly different [from 'Human Conditions'], though certainly more pastoral and perhaps more middle of the road.

Essentially, this is the same album as On the Six, only a little longer with a little less focus and not as many memorable songs. This lack of winning singles becomes a drag, since at over an hour, the record meanders much longer than it should.