Allen does indeed rally at unexpected moments--"Insincerely Yours" slides along to a yacht-soul groove, "Life for Me" cleverly twists Vampire Weekend's Graceland obsessions, and although the target of an Internet troll is beneath her, the barbs on "URL Badman" are at least sharpened--but these songs only put the rest of Sheezus in dreary relief.

It's the kind of music that will always be polarizing, as some fans buy into it with fervor and zeal while other cringe from the first chord.

Even when the songs sound coherent and have some interesting moments, the jarring beats still come on as incessantly aggressive with no actual power, inspiration, or deeper statement driving the noise.

For all its sonic "ambition," Phosphorescent Harvest is a mess. It's a collection of songs without a unifying center.

It's all perfectly pleasant and a convincing testament to what Clapton learned from Cale, although its silvery monochromatic shuffles suggest J.J. was a little more one-dimensional than he actually was.

Though the complete stylistic overhaul is admirable, the earliest results of Ices' experimentation with her new sound are pleasant at times but less than gripping overall.

It seems like he missed an opportunity here to really put his well-earned gravitas into a genre that would be ripe for it. That the rather mundane and conservative A New Testament is the end result of his country explorations is a bit of a shame.

The band's laconic, devil-may-care charm is evident throughout the 11-track set, but they seemingly lacked the follow-through to ensure that their deal with the cloven-hoofed and bifurcated-tailed swindler included the ability to conjure up some hooks.

Unfortunately, the final product often feels joyless and manic, and many listeners may give up before sitting through the entire beast.

There's only one track with any forward motion, and it's the overly slick and one-dimensional "I'll Be Back." Otherwise, Otherness is mostly murky and overcooked ballads, without hooks or much emotional impact.

While there's some charm in the fact that Seger is loose enough to keep his ends untied, Ride Out is hobbled by that exacting production: conceptually, it's something of a ragged mess and it'd benefit from sounding like one.

The album effectively sets a mood but tends to lack the richness and labyrinthine quality of the previous album. It's too direct, skeletal, and mechanical to function as more than background listening.

Honor is the first album where Rancid sound obvious, like on the heavy ska "Everybody's Sufferin'," where the lyrics about how everybody's suffering are delivered in cornball Jamaican accents. It's the first time they sound empty, too, like they're going through the motions with little or no passion driving them.

This kind of work doesn't make for an album which one is inclined to return to for repeated listening.

A large portion of Black Metal resembles the kind of lo-fi, quantity-over-quality, solitary works of eccentrics who would have been at home in the mid- to late '80s on labels like Factory Benelux, Creation, or, well, Rough Trade.

The hardcore fans might notice the difference but, apart from those three songs, there's not much reason for them to pick this up because Forever consists of songs they've purchased many times over.

It may bear the mark of Venom, but it lacks the heart-stopping toxicity of its inception.

Future Brown clearly know what to synthesize and how to select. The whole here, however, is less than the sum of its parts.

Projections, Fairhurst's first album, designed more for home listening than for dancefloors, is relatively listless, sometimes torpid, and often sounds more like a project than a form of expression.

Ultimately, this is likely to satisfy only the most devout sects of Brown's and Tyga's fan bases.

Ultimately, it frustrates because the listener doesn't get much in the way of reward for the chore of endurance.

The duo's desire to strip the music of all energy leaves the songs limp, unable to make an impression in an age when songs are screaming for attention everywhere you turn.

The entire album has a general lack of excitement that could be Matt and Kim mailing it in, or taking one step too far toward the pop mainstream and losing the punkish edge that made their music pop like bubbles in a bottle of shaken-up soda.

Cute he may be, but he has charisma that lasts no longer than a GIF, as Handwritten makes painfully clear.

Without their old-timey affectations, the band seems interchangeable with any number of blandly attractive AAA rockers, a group that favors sound over song.

The group's self-titled second album cuts down on the group's more excessive tendencies, with only "A Pleasure to Burn" surpassing the five-minute mark, and seems to have more of a stripped-down songwriting style as well.

A stilted album.

While one can always sense the pain and joy in the mere sound of Stone's voice, some of the songs' lines provoke head scratching rather than knowing nods. Through deep, repeated listening, the album increasingly resembles ragtag emoting. Heard passively, it's all pleasant summertime listening.