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.