Inevitably, most of the studio design on each song is greedy and belabored. Everything is in its right place, but everything is too obvious or too proportionally gaudy to warrant more than a signatory “lo-fi” moniker.

At their best they write strong, clean, melodic rip-offs of classic British indie rock and at their worst they write weak, clean, melodic rip-offs of classic British indie rock.

Even the best songs of Our Love To Admire can’t reach the boggling complexity and honesty of most anything from "Turn On The Bright Lights" (2002).

Doctor’s Advocate is essentially a long album of just okay rhymes, just okay rapping, and (without the benefit of best-of-year sublimity like Cool & Dre’s “Hate It or Love It” production) a lot of just okay beats.

There are hits on Good Girl Gone Bad, big clubfisted ones, but they're wedged in with facsimiles and reductions.

Black Mountain is as mundane, bleak, and hollow as the cover art would suggest.

The strategy is the same: start with a basic, inoffensive and unambitious melody, repeat it over and over again, toss on a few scatting horns (between three and five notes only, please, and let’s keep dissonance to a minimum) and whatever other trinkets are in the studio, and voila! An instantly forgettable pop breeze.

It’s a predictable formula, a majority of the tracks building to a triumphant climax set to an egg timer, peppered with forced witticisms, seemingly culled from Postsecret, that have reached a new apex of laziness.

Stephin Merritt, once capable of such subtlety, such beauty in his cynicism, has produced a record that's surprisingly shallow.

Sound[s] less like the work of an actual band than a sterile concoction created by scientists in white lab coats.

[50's] rhymes are as stupid as ever.

At least 45 of X&Y’s 63 minutes finds Coldplay overdosing on pointless synthesizers in the name of “expanding their sound” while forgetting to write anything reflecting a decent hook.

You wanna hear a mediocre hip hop album with a few decent songs? That’s the T.I. I’ve come to know and love.

The Odd Couple from its superior predecessor (just: the writing is a bit weaker, the arrangements sleepier, the production effects a bit thicker) and so its most glaring flaw is that it simply lacks St. Elsewhere‘s invigorated tone, following the same blueprint with cheaper components, producing off-putting retreads whose only appeal lies in their similarity to more effective tracks on Gnarls’s former effort

Ludacris has created the most uneven album of his career, so frontloaded it might as well be an EP.

You Can Have What You Want is like "Turn on the Bright Lights" (2002) without the drama, without a voice as deep or distinct as Paul Banks’, and without the hooks. Instead of all that, Papercuts opt for a vague, beige production and generally indecipherable lyrics that may or may not be about some kind of futuristic utopia/dystopia.

It is his fourth record to be titled Finally Famous, which is preposterous for a lot of reasons, the largest of which being that he is still not famous.

The schizophrenia on display here is not of the dramatic sort that intrigues or interests; it’s a very real disorder that befuddles and annoys the listener.

The lyrics and musicianship are of the quality to be expected from Hayden, but something’s a little... boring about Elk Lake Serenade.

He establishes grand lyrical arches, overworked symbols, and Deep Meaning. Problem is, he forgets any of the emotion, realism, or originality that would make anyone care.

While the best of it is good enough to promise a fruitful and substantive future, the worst of it suggests that in a few years time, Mr. Mathers may be little beyond a slightly intimidating class clown.

DeLaughter needs to be more personal; already having a dozen people yelling at you distances the ideas they express, but emptying those ideas of any meaning isn’t the answer.

If this record had come out in ’94 it would have been groundbreaking. ’98 and it would have been good. But it’s ’05 now, and there aren’t many reasons to be impressed.

Rising Down is pretty much same old same old.

It’s Not Me It’s You is neither grating or annoying. It’s merely boring.

Whatever thematic consistency existed on Yoshimi or Soft Bulletin is completely absent here. Or just so vague and bloated that the sentiment’s useless.

Let it be said here first: Kasabian is indisputably one of the most important albums of 1997. Unfortunately, it’s 2005, and we’re left wondering just what the hell they're trying to pull.

Let Us Never Speak of it Again is bor-ing.