She has fresh relationship issues to work through on Flavors of Entanglement, her first set of new tunes since 2004, but she has difficulty striking a balance between soul-searching and dance grooves on a set that doesn't distinguish itself with either.

Where Francis suffers is in the music.

The moments where Lennon lays himself most bare... reveal there's still a gulf between his own pop and his father's universal sound.

While the slow-into-snappy single '7 Things' is an obvious attempt at a follow-up, and although much of the disc tends toward the same mildly punky pop (much of it co-written by Cyrus), there's an unwelcome familiarity to the hooks, a sense that Breakout is actually just a mash-up of moves tried and discarded by Lohan/Duff/fill-in-the-Disney-diva-of-your choice.

Sov never quite recaptures the brash personality and cutting-edge sound of her first album. The beats here are more pedestrian, the lyrics more tentative, and for all her talk in the press notes about resuming her career (after a six-month break) with a sense of control over her music, Jigsaw sounds more like an album without a firm direction than the wide-ranging statement of purpose she meant it to be.

Whereas its early tunes built from twitchy verses to shout-along choruses, the new material skews glossy and nondescript.

The lack of experimentation isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, and the album's finer moments come when Hoppus and Barker stick with what they know.

It's a collection packed with groaning clichés and calculated banality, and while that's not so different from plenty of music in any era, Leave This Town is so formulaic, it could have come from a laboratory at DuPont, where they make plastic.

The San Diego rockers haven’t completely reined in their runaway libidos on Slick Dogs and Ponies, but they stray from the devilish attitude that made their brazen dirty talk such a riot.

A record with stronger songs that somehow manages to sound just as banal as her first.

The third disc, Bria Valente's Elixer, is a tepid afterthought.

Her songs and the ways in which she works them frequently lack distinction, and though an artist whose appeal is rough edges doesn't need to be sophisticated to be effective, neither should she be quite so ordinary.

No such luck on 'Cause I Sez So, an album that, despite a few bright spots, is too flimsy and forgettable to honor the Dolls' legacy.

Detours clearly wants to be Bob Dylan but ends up being Bob Roberts instead.

Its all-too-mechanical new album fails to meet the band's genre-melting potential.

By the end of Teenage Dream--hell, halfway through--it's apparent that neither Perry nor her collaborators had much to say that was meaningful, or even particularly interesting. It sure didn't stop them from saying it anyway.

Mostly, though, the album is noisy jumble of competing sounds and ideas, none of which ever develops fully enough to make MAYA into as cohesive a statement as her first two albums.

Much of this album is leaden and lumbering, with the vocals mixed low (thanks, Albini) and gummy bass tugging at curtains of distortion, but there are shining exceptions.

Left to his own devices, Gahan, a mediocre songwriter at best, is forced to rely mostly on personality. Hourglass, his second solo album, is more a collection of moods than tunes.

Almost every dramatic synth swell, exploding snare and multi-tracked "Yeaaahhhh" has been done better elsewhere.

This time, however, the subject matter is more mundane, and Jackson's flattened vocals are paired with less imaginative post-punk guitars and synths.

Blackout is her fifth and most hilarious record, thanks largely to the contrast between the often-brilliant musical production and Spears' steadfast insistence on taking herself seriously and expecting you will, too on songs called 'Get Naked (I Got a Plan),' 'Freakshow' and 'Why Should I Be Sad?'

Lewis has tons of charisma--but it's a shame the shift in focus coincides with an album so superficial that her characters' hollow-eyed come-ons seem genuine by comparison.

The band sounds crisper and cleaner than it should.

Harry remains a creative force, and it's clear she needs to continue making music, but her new songs lack the cohesive spark needed to make anyone but diehard fans take notice.

The title of the Smashing Pumpkins' new album seems like wishful thinking. So does the music, for that matter

A muddled mess of convoluted textures that is at times, frankly, unlistenable.

When juxtaposed with the album's bubble-gum bounce, the creepy parts just seem creepier.