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.