Frank Black doing a perfectly fine job producing totally average Art Brut material can’t help but inspire a resounding “meh,” a minor pleasantry worth neither cheers nor jeers but maybe a little shoulder-shrug and a smile.

It’s an intermittently interesting and somewhat forward looking work-in-process, but at the moment Hebden sounds like an underground hip-hop producer with a few ideas but no MC.

There’s wit and meticulous posturing in the hills: we’ll be waiting right here for tomorrow. After all, there are enough immediately delectable grooves in his eleven tracks today.

As it stands, 'To Clean' and 'Rain On' deserve their place late on your sweetheart mixtapes, and they’ll be charming in their small doses, but they’re much too rare here, nestled between puzzling decisions and bedroom leftovers.

This album maintains youth and vigor through dirty language and clean production, but eventually settles for something very middle-of-the-road.

Rather than anticipating something new, Small Craft on a Milk Sea ultimately feels like one of the final surges of a style and format that Eno himself is outgrowing.

Fulton’s beat-making is stellar, but devoting attention to it also necessitates suffering the consistently insufferable Kanamori, and stylistic schizophrenia that’s as jarring as it is unique.

The libretto/story/concept of the album is of absolutely no interest to me, and it won't be to you either.

The first four or so tracks of Sees the Light hold their own in terms of melody and momentum....Unfortunately, Sees the Light devolves from there into full-on, committed homogeneity, songs blending into each other with little to set them apart

This record, though, feels complacent, like he’s a bit stuck and is trying to find a way forward.

It’s a shame to see the character of Mike Skinner become so stale and hackneyed, especially when the beats are stronger than they’ve ever been before.

Time to Die doesn’t seem to strive for anything, so it settles into being a pleasant little pop record, boring and bereft of character.

My point is that topping already listless, dreamy tunes with even more listless production can make it difficult to perceive any dynamics across the whole album. Odawas do make inroads towards changing it up, but it’s hard to hear anything but the relentlessly slow pace and saccharine production.

Phantom Punch is a good album, but not a great one, and certainly not the Career Record that Duper Sessions almost was.

Sings Live! is clearly an offering from Colin Meloy to his devoted fans who have either especially enjoyed his shows or have never had the opportunity to attend them. In that respect, this live collection achieves its (hardly lofty) goals, and for that Meloy should be applauded, perhaps not as raucously as at his shows, but, y’know, a golf clap would be appropriate.

Perhaps there will come a moment when Repo suddenly clicks as a beautifully connected opus, but that seems doubtful; for the time being it’s just a frustrating listen, held back by its unnecessarily unconventional explorations.

Nearly everything else on Old Growth consists of middling blues-rock with impressive soloing but negligible heft.

New axe-slinger or not, I'm With You is a given for this band--at least four songs too long and Rick Rubin's nonchalance leaves everything sounding precisely and consistently the same.

But far from ruffled or startling, Hold Time simply fills the quota Ward’s assigned himself and, (im)properly slaked, poofs off, contrails the last reminder that, yes, Jason Lytle’s still alive.

Listening to Yuck is kind of like having a conversation with someone who agrees with everything you say. Pleasant at first, it eventually and quickly feels useless.

It’ll play huge at the Troubadour. It’s just that, as much orchestration clearly went into this record, it seems content to be merely “well done,” when the opening two tracks make it absolutely, exhilaratingly clear that there’s more than that at stake here.

Acher’s still a brilliant musician, and Bohm has the capacity to wreak some vicious vocal havoc. But now, fitting into a niche that they once helped epitomize, their record sounds stale.

An album at once tighter and more terrifying than anything they’ve yet released.

Set Free’s singularity is also its greatest flaw, and a band that adheres to a formula as strictly as the AmAnSet does to its will never make a masterpiece, despite the fact that every track on this album is good.

There are a couple of Young's obligatory, wandering acoustic ditties to water down the already short track list, and Lanois' soft touch seems to render antiseptic even those few moments of feedback and reverb.

Until the group learns to keeps pace or more effectively makes space for Thorpe, their singer will remain the first, best, and only reason to listen to Wild Beasts.

Listening to this record is like hearing someone who has some moral fiber describe their first one-night stand. There is seriousness, jubilation, unease, and regret.

In the context of their seemingly blinkered attempts at finding some source of inspiration they've produced an entertainingly atmospheric, melodic record to bracing and accessible effect.

Freakout is a struggle between balance and shambles; the compositions constantly wobble beneath a gravity that threatens to bring them down for good and to render Broder’s brain inane for all time.

This album, despite its merits, doesn't do much but position the band as a bunch of revivalists in serious need of reviving.

I doubt that anybody who found enjoyment in Behind The Music will be able to outright hate Origin Volume 1 because it’s about as similar to its predecessor as a follow-up record can be.

If straightforward pop songs are what they seek, tightening up the rhythm section is absolutely essential, though here they’ve overstepped the line between “tightening” and “dumbing down completely.”

Saturday Night Wrist continues the Deftones’ sad trend, another album of scattered transcendent moments in a field of attention-getting parlour tricks, still eagerly tugging at the listener’s sleeve to say, "Listen to this sound we created!"

What’s so frustrating about this effort is its potential to be great, a possibility visible even through its painfully apparent flaws.

Despite its painfully obvious flaws, Distortion isn’t bad in the sense that it lacks gratifying melodies or does not possess a certain nostalgic charm.

She’s still plenty capable of bringing the funk when she plays to her strengths. Unfortunately, she only does so for half of City Beach, relegating her solo debut to little more than a curiosity for the Luscious Jackson hardcore.

The Broken String is a collection of mostly likeable songs, one dud, and one song-of-the-year-quality track.

The problem, then, is that “Blessing Force” sucks and most of the rest of the songs imitate with varying success the music of the band’s staggering 2005 output.

Ashes & Fire might mark the first time he could ever been described as simply dull.

Let The Blind never pitches badly or throws up a truly terrible track to mack on and leaves me with the potentially duff argument that this record is really good at what it does, but what it does so exactingly reaches for breadthlessness that its under-ambition ends up under-cutting what made the songs pleasant and amenable in the first place.

As a Caribou album, this is mediocre. Not bad, but it's not much of a Caribou album anyway.

Myths of the Near Future is probably the most assured British debut since Franz Ferdinand’s self-titled.

The problem isn’t the music, which is lively and varied, but the disconnect between the artistic intent and the artistic output.

Hard Islands is hardly a wash, just frustratingly short of the sound statement Fake wanted to make.

Worldwide‘s participatory highs are intense, if fleeting, and that cover would look amazing on a t-shirt.

Engineers is a promising if frequently innocuous first time out, with its excellent production and musicianship bogged down by weak-kneed songwriting and idiotic sequencing.

Where the compilation loses itself is in its exhaustive nature. An update to the sound of older songs (albeit not much older) seems appropriate enough given how important production was to the scream and sheen of their self-titled album.

Amok is a palatable piece of 21st Century electronic pop that generally sounds complex without really being that complex at all. It’s as smooth a surface as Yorke has ever painted, without grain or contour. It seems designed to say little, to equivocate, to slither around the perimeter of our expectations.

Sundown is still considerably boring when compared to the likes of the Kings' first three albums. It's also too long, the back end sacked with faceless mid-tempo songs devoid of hooks that can't compare to the mini-epics up front.

You leave Nine Kinds of Light completely unaltered, neither enlightened nor offended, simply having experienced a series of first-person statements: Adebimpe in his doorless (and not terribly interesting) tower of self.

Sadly, the only true victories on Dumb Luck are Tamborello's own title track and Oberst's "Breakfast in Bed."

[The] drums generally sound weaker and lazier than anything [he's] done before, [the] songs lack strong structure and hooks, [and his] topical matter’s a bit one-tracked.

While B’lieve I’m Goin’ Down, at least as far as its words are concerned, is more interesting than it appears on the first few spins, that’s not quite enough to make it a memorable listen.

It's the sound of all the band's weapons unceremoniously blunted.

It's probably their most immediate and consistent record to date, tossing in a few decent melodies along the way in an attempt -- a failed one, I might add -- to enter the slightly less crowded lot of mediocre country-rock outfits.

If this album works, it’s because of moments like “Landslide”: those that cut through the density of an artist in flux, one susceptible to myriad influences, managerial grumblings, and producer cues, overeager to pass off his work as undeniably unique.

The terrible truth of this album hangs stupidly overhead--that it’s a yawner.

Lurking somewhere in its spotty 80+ minutes lies an excellent 40 minute album, one of the best the Foos have ever done. As is, though, with its heaps of filler, dated production and needless segregation of rockers from ballads, it may actually be their weakest.

Where Dios felt structured, (relatively) focused, and clever, dios (malos) just is let to drift in a mess of under-developed songs, odes to drug abuse, and unfocused guitar strumming.

Dälek have refined their work but their work has no reaching trajectory.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor offer a majestic, beautiful coda for a version of protest that is dated and unhelpful today. I missed having their music around, but I wonder whose eyes they're opening with a record that sounds like a document of yesterday's anger.

La Cucaracha is still a bit of a disappointment, short on memorable tunes and a bit muddier and more piecemeal than it should be.

2 seems to merely scratch the surface of what DeMarco can do; a record of what-ifs and wishes, 2 is only a partial glimpse of a guy we know too little about.

Favourite Worst Nightmare seems warped and contrived, bearing all the signs and watermarks of a band trying not to feel uncomfortable.

Here’s hoping Sweet Sister is the sound of a talented group shaking out some superficial songwriting ideas before getting down to it.

Ted Leo again falls a few hands short of the definitive statement we insist on expecting.

The production swamps. Too many waves of superfluities covering weak melodies and spearheading disappointing "new directions," too often sounding like the work of a far less interesting band.

An occasionally pretty but merely competent lite-alt-country, the kind you’d hear ordering a soy latte with a shot of hazelnut.

Faith in the Future disappoints in its lackluster melodies and overall vibe. The highlights here are the more ambitious songs.

If Soul Position intended to craft a wholly direct, musically and lyrically and conceptually simplistic piece of positive rap, like a modern day Arrested Development album, then I think they did that well enough, and I guess I don’t fully appreciate because I’m too caught up in my own gangly mental schematic of what it is that makes good hip-hop good.

You won’t hate this record; you won’t be any more capable of hating this record as you would a particularly aesthetically pleasing houseplant. But the record’s greatest achievement is that it’s happy with just not being hated.

Given that the record is so nominally personal and probing, it’s telling that there is not one moment of transcendence, or relief, or acceptance, or melody, or substance.

In all, the languidness of Rules has its own odd charm—since WBA never aspire to be much beyond a wistful dance pop quartet, they don’t fall down the stairs too embarrassingly.

Neither funny nor thought-provoking, the band strains for touchstones beyond the technicality of prog-metal and rarely achieves them.

As a record standing almost entirely on nostalgia, sure, it gives schmaltzy ’70s dance music a fine, not-sacrilegious update and sets it to a pleasant neon glow, but it’s a trip through history that’s almost more educational than immersive.

Would be much better if it came with an option to turn the vocals off.

While there's nothing wrong with the production displayed on When Fish Ride Bicycles, Inglish laid down the blueprint for supporting this duo so well that the oft busier and more varied work on this outing feels like too much to digest and too much for them to wade through.

There’s other fun songs on The Sun, but nothing that sustains itself as consistently as “Charlotte” and “Numbers.”

Although they have some serviceable indie disco hits, Clor are merely the latest production line band to explore a niche in the market, though their attempt at nerdy, computerised post punk rubs one off as a flawed blend of, of all things, The Downward Spiral and Zwan.

The title Attack & Release implies the best aspects of the Black Keys’ music, all sweat and hurt and sweat and ecstasy, but the album neither gives nor takes, neither emotional nor sweaty but still clammy-handed.

Nothing Hurts ends up being its own worst enemy: it obscures its biggest strengths, choosing not to showcase them but to drown them out in a familiar and uninteresting haze.

Crow’s ego and identity have been largely removed from Living Well’s equation, and in its place are a number of undeviating, short, one-word-title indie rock songs that don’t require an explanation or setup.

Fun and fresh enough on the first couple listens, it remains to be seen whether Vampire Weekend can find long-term favour with the listeners and critics so taken with them at present.

It's a realization in retrospect that occurs too often throughout In Heaven. And in those moments one can't help but be disappointed, hearing Twin Sister such a cut below what they were doing just one short year ago.

Eat Skull can be really charming when they want to be, but just as often they seem content to putter around, resulting in enough slack to overwhelm such a short record.

Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is actually pretty good, and sometimes it’s great, but it is quiet, sounding very much like it sprung from the Internet ether to politely ask for thirty minutes of your attention.

This is the third album in a row where Snaith seems to have devoted most of his effort into submerging his own unique voice deep within the musical persona he's adopted, I just don't really get what I'm supposed to do with it. Like, should we get him some water wings to keep his head above the water?

The songs generally hold up, but the production job remains confounding. Keith Uddin’s meaty fists have ruined this album.

My frustration is simple: not only does the record’s production drag down what could have (probably) been good songs, the band deliberately downplays its two best players, and everything suffers as a consequence.

Nothing is really very exciting here, or very interesting.

As a whole, it's not consistently buoyant enough to be a good pop record, and the politics that weigh down its middle section aren't sharp enough to make it into anything more than a middle section weighed down by some obvious politics.

Unfortunately, too much of Snakes and Arrows is dominated by mid-tempo, lumbering behemoths.

There are songs on Nouns that seemingly defy you to listen, and not because they’re loud or crass or due-heavy on true-dat market-maneuvers and what I guess we can now safely call “aural assault”; and not because of the bad vocals, bunkered mix job, or the hundred and one other things that would make your parents, my professors or Celine Dion hate this album.

Grinderman isn’t angry and it isn’t raw, just a careful concoction of licentiousness and braying disdain ultimately monotonous and unexciting after the first four cuts.

Instead of wrenching free of every single confinement that’s ever been placed around his tiny waist, like he’s pretty much always done, Prince is settling into 3121, accepting the decades of his career as what he should be content in emulating.

Where † crafted sly treasures out of gaudy detritus, single-minded as it may have been, Audio, Video, Disco simply settles for canonizing the forgettable.

Another World desperately labors to keep fans satiated and ends up overburdened, somewhere nicely between all its scattered intentions.

After Drag It Up, their dismal last offering, The Believer is another sign pointing to what may be the wreck of the Old 97s.