Too often the band fall prey to the conventions of the music from which they're borrowing.

Green's harder edge and presence as a musician can be heard lyrically, although her soft vocals fall flat, shrouded by a sea of synthesized blips and bleeps from the ubiquitous drum sounds.

I Sell the Circus is an uneven collection from an artist clearly torn between the future and his past.

As a standalone product, Vroom Vroom only offers a scattershot glimpse at what these two might be able to accomplish.

As it stands, the album is a half-baked effort that resembles a collection of demos rather than a high-stakes sophomore album.

[The guitars are] the most interesting thing about Broken Water and when they aren't around things plod along uneventfully.

As an album wanders, more opportunities arise for a wrong turn. Omnion veers to a fault.

Here's hoping they ditch the alt clichés and find their own sound on the next record.

Spread over 12 songs, Del Rey becomes so ordinary, even bland, that no amount of little girl vocals or pouting can save her.

Unfortunately, the band play it safe on No Coast.

Teri Gender Bender's vocals are the star and the driving force here, pretty much the only truly engaging element.

The thing with As You Please is that while it feels uneventful, it also seems like Citizen might be just on the edge of a breakthrough.

The risk of keeping things breezy is that tracks can often lack weight.

The EP is good but not great. Diplo missed an opportunity to explore a variety of emerging EDM genres, instead releasing a slew of tracks that bang hard but fail to resonate.

Tracks like the rambling "Old Things," the hoedown-lite "Bluebird" and perhaps the most precious song about outlaw life, "Private Property," shoot for middle-of-the-road appreciation, sucking out any grit from the recording.

The album's missteps aren't egregious; rather, it's that after multiple listens, very little sticks. The Tourist's inconspicuousness is its biggest issue.

Something Beautiful does, of course, sound beautiful — Shawn Everett's production is widescreen and larger than life, but still remembers to dial things back when needed, although maybe not always quite enough (Cyrus is an impressive balladeer! "The Climb" was a moment!) — but it also rings hollow.

The mixtape format may excuse the lack of sonic cohesion for the project, but it does not explain the faltering artistic direction that is more than likely to leave Yachty's fans disoriented and disenchanted.

The album is fun and enjoyable, but it never really reaches what they are capable of as a dynamic group. Every song bleeds into the next, almost sounding the same. It's not the worst feature ever, but as a collection, it doesn't stick out as anything exceptional.

On By the Fire opener "Hashish," Moore and his trio wholesale borrow the intro, main riff and melody from Sonic Youth's 1998 single "Sunday," while the most poppy and compact track on the LP, "Cantaloupe", freely cops the guitar rhythm of SY's 1992 classic "Sugar Kane." But once Moore becomes tired of repurposing old riffs, noise breakdowns, and tunings, he reverts to simply repeating intros and harmonies across the album's nine tracks and 80 minutes, melding together elements from the sluggish "Calligraphy" and the guileless "Dreamers Work."

There's nothing super memorable about this record, nor is there anything horribly offensive about it either. Ultimately, ACR Loco doesn't match A Certain Ratio's past glories, but it doesn't erase their legacy either.

V. never rises above space rock, making the album feel like any other '60s hippie/psychedelic record. It's adequate, but when you can easily predict how it's going to play out, you're never left wanting more.

There's nothing quite crazy enough, however, to be truly exciting and the slower numbers offer little in the way of texture or atmosphere.

The sparse "Phone Tap" tells a tale of drug dealing paranoia, while the Big K.R.I.T.-assisted "Brimstone" is a remorseful hymnal. These moments are still few and far between, and the rest of Ross' tales of pushing fall short of revealing whether his ascent to boss status is factual or purely fictional.

Most of the material just hovers around the same tempo, tone, lyrical style and sound dynamics, robbing the listener of any sort of emotional peaks or valleys that are so important when floating a double album. It's simply a shame that the execution of Cyr fails to match the naked ambition Corgan's concepts promised.

Diehard fans of the Brazilian band who rekindled their interest in the band with the return of Roots producer Ross Robinson will find Machine Messiah lacklustre, possibly even forgettable, when held up to Sepultura's better past work.

A good portion of Total Folklore finds Friel treading the same murky path, leaving the listener with brazen, barefaced ideas and shambling, barefoot execution.

Team Ghost and Fromageau have a number of good ideas, but the band's biggest downfall stems from the fact that they sometimes condense too many of these ideas into too small a space.