The problem with Hymns is that it chugs along with a series of stilted niceties that lack any kind of rhythm or emotion.

With Runaway, MSTRKRFT find a balance between the antagonistic incursion and electro-funk wizardry, but asides from that standout, the record as a whole is a jarring affair.

One good single does not a great album make, and unfortunately, the rest of the record becomes pretty tedious, pretty quickly.

None of the songs are good enough as growers or deep tracks to hold up the album.

It’s impressive in small doses, but as Culture progresses you get a strong sense of deja vu, where each track upends the next with a petty familiarity that is just frustratingly repetitive.

Bleached have discovered that they have a canny knack for inoffensive rhythms, melodies and harmonies which will immediately appeal. But where this record needed to provide an abrasive counterpoint in the lyrics, they’re more sickly sweet than the music.

More than anything, Big Talk reflects the Vegas background of its middling maestro.

There may be nothing exactly wrong with Good Arrows as a record, and I’m sure that in a different time and situation it would be considered a respectable if shallow pop record.

With Junk of the Heart, the Kooks are completely discarding level-headedness in favor of offbeat trial tests that fail to give any of the tracks any added gravitas.

The real problem is that the best ideas are outvoted by frustrating ones, leaving us with little touches like the short, yelping-like sound in the second verse of More or the distorted vocals that end killing boys. There are some good moments here, but even the best of them can’t help Halsey get out of her own way.

An occasionally fun, occasionally catchy pop record that will log a few hits, move a few units and ultimately be forgotten once this particular pop trend goes the way of Crunk, Snap Music, the Power Ballad and all the other castoffs in the ever-expanding pop graveyard.

One of the most disappointing debut albums I've ever heard.

After half a decade away, If Not Now, When? really does feel like a misstep. Hopefully a little creative control can be wrestled away from Boyd in the future, otherwise a much under-rated band really could be lost forever.

The album aims for Grohl-esque rock anthems, but falls short mostly due to a lack of melodic gifts; given that, it needs many more musical ideas than it has to keep anybody interested.

Beachy summer party/winter bummer wallpaper for your Bohemian café-bar and for the hipsters that frequent it, who like their pop music perfectly pleasant and non-threatening.

The album does have one redeeming aspect preventing its plunge into epic echelons of suck, and that's lead single Party Rock Anthem.

Magic Hour's never exactly bad. It's worse than that. It's boring.

13 songs in 36 minutes is a constrictive ratio for a record with so many proposed ideas, and its brevity makes Rustie’s ideas sound especially half-hearted. It’s bad enough that he doesn’t give the more physical tracks enough time to flex their muscles, but the tracks which suffer most are the briefer, more innocuous pieces.

Unoriginal, haphazardly thrown together and lacking most of what could make it the least bit enjoyable, Places Like This just proves that Architecture in Helsinki is a one trick pony.

It's just painfully mediocre.

Their style fits in between Chvrches and Taylor Swift’s 1989, though not up to that level of craft. Interesting moments, like the echoing guitar of There’s A Honey or the finger-snap rhythm of Loveless Girl, are drowned out by overstuffed songs with unmemorable melodies.

The Future Bites is the worst sounding album he’s ever put out.

here isn't enough variation on here to retain its limited intrigue, as Lortz relies too much on his consistently unremarkable songwriting; ultimately, it's a forgettable record.

There’s barely any turntable work, just vanilla rock that once you’ve heard once you’ve heard it a million times. ... Incubus have un-made themselves.

Given that these songs mostly clock in under two minutes, that should be enough to carry the flat arrangements and melodies, but it's not.

Colonia has an awful lot of ideas, but doesn’t really know what to do with them and the majority of tracks end up sounding messy and--like the rest of us following Christmas--carrying a little too much extra weight.

Into The Diamond Sun is somewhat equivalent to being pelted with macaroons; at first sweet, delicate, even impressively constructed, but soon proving not just boring, but intensely samey, sickly and unsatisfying.

Lyrically it’s weak, and the over-polished studio buffing does nothing to emancipate the blueprint that is, essentially, the same as it was 17 years ago.