Now and then you get a glimpse of ideas that could’ve made the album more powerful if they’d been further explored. ... But the songs are so spiritless and phoned-in that those moments are too little, too late.

It all adds up to a whole that’s somehow less than the sum of its parts.

In lieu of artistry or any semblance of lyrical spark, DST offers monotonous production and relentless chanting.

These 14 purpose-punk "anthems" (songs with loud multi-tracked vocals during the choruses) sound like Anti-Flag hastily thawed them out of mid-90s cryogenic stasis in a moment of frenzied conviction that we've never needed them more.

Songs you'd expect to swell and boil over--which is what Modest Mouse are good at--often end up trudging humourlessly (Ansel, Be Brave), and things get far worse in the moments where humour is actually the goal.

This album belongs chained up in the vaults.

The album wobbles between Timberlake-style sexy-time R&B, Bublé-light standards and flat attempts at sincere John Legend-type balladry.

If maturing means 14 (regular edition) tracks of footy-stadium-worthy anthemic choruses ad nauseam, I don’t want 1-D to grow up.

The most listenable song is the Chavril duet Let Me Go, which has zero of either musician’s “edge” and a whole lot of adult contemporary schmaltz.

Authentic is ridiculous right down to the heavy-breathing interludes, which worked for Usher circa 2003.

There's nothing musically redeemable about My God Is Blue.

[An] utterly vacuous, unlistenable album.

Past the dancehall signifiers (Paul's increasingly strained lilt and tepid syncopated pulse), the new record is brazenly mediocre.

Lulu sinks to almost unimaginable lows.

You'd figure we'd at least get a one-off novelty track, but the flat, repetitive melodies and gimmicky rhymes even fail to do that.

Not sure what's more embarrassing: the Good Charlotte/Atreyu sleaze rock take on Dr. Teeth's Night Life or the idea that this tribute's hope is to make adults want to feel like kids again. Either way, the whole thing deserves a Miss Piggy karate chop.

Here I Am concerns itself with the kind of bland, radio-friendly R&B pop that equates sex appeal with self-confidence.

Over-emoting at every turn, she obliterates otherwise innocuous soul, R&B and reggae-inflected songs with gimmicky vocal histrionics, strident attempts at melisma and the kind of callow self-help lyrics that are apparently mandatory for all young pop stars nowadays.

Despite their brevity, the songs are repetitive, wanky and almost impossible to differentiate. They make you yearn for the days before genre cross-pollination.

Topping off this overproduced, underwhelming effort are Roberts's over-enunciated lyrics. Even at his best, he comes off like a guy crashing an Of Montreal album.

This is not an observation about theme--the record is unremarkable in both sound and execution.

While a hip-hop album that’s not a complete kielbasa festival is refreshing, Luda’s feminist intentions are horribly misguided.

The closest this popportunistic foursome comes to satisfying songsmithery is "The Getaway," whose title is sound advice for potential buyers of this album.

Robert Smith, Franz Ferdinand and Wolfmother offer glimpses of what this project might’ve been, but then along comes 3 Doors Down-clone Shinedown and it’s off with the heads of everyone involved in this nightmare.

Rebirth is – without qualification – the most embarrassing album of the last 10 years. Embarrassing for him, for his audience, for rap, for humanity.

The newest disc from the once-innovative Vancouver group assaults you with 18 contrived, lazy tracks. The best is a seven-year-old re-release, 'Red Dragon,' from when Moka Only gave this outfit some class.

The problems that litter No Line fall into two categories: mind-numbing blandness on the part of the band or embarrassing, face-palm-inducing vocal choices by Bono.

He rushes through the tunes, slurring syllables as if enunciating the lyrics would be too much work even if he could remember all of them. And clearly, one day wasn’t enough rehearsal time for his hired band, who are so often in vamp mode while trying to figure out where Morrison’s going that they lose track of the tunes.

There seems to be something unsettlingly artifical about the whole Beirut project, as if idea man Zach Condon is playing some strange cultural appropriation game for which he’s the only one privy to the rules.

All 11 tracks feature painfully predictable song structures and lethargic chord progressions devoid of anything resembling a hook.

Kroeger’s voice sounds more like a wounded goat than ever before, and their blatantly recycled songs touch on familiar themes like strippers, sex, prostitutes, drugs, sex, drinking and sex.

They’ve set their laser harp on “snooze” and come up with a yawn-inspiring set of digital whoosh over which to chant some nonsense that at best resembles the Chemical Brothers at their worst.

As it turns out, Scherzinger’s not interesting enough on her own, so she’s padding out her shtick with four glorified backup singers in tow.

Instead of moving forward with a bold new sound, they seem lost and confused, eventually reverting to the sprawling space rock jams of their early years, which may be their comfort zone.

For Mötley Crüe, every new record is a Faustian deal: their former glory as 80s hair-metal badasses in exchange for sustained economic success in a diminished, lame-ified state.

Sitek attempts to do Johansson (and us) a favour by burying her monotonous voice deep in the mix, but unfortunately, the musical support isn’t interesting enough to carry the album. Skip it.

Everything on My Bloody Underground suffers from Newcombe’s chronic lack of focus, leaving the entire mess sounding like half-assed sonic sketches farted out in a friend’s basement over a woozy weekend.

Boring grooves that last a couple of minutes before ending abruptly just don’t cut it. What a letdown.

His bored delivery and ridiculous lyrics about peanut butter sandwiches and rich kids make his two-minute tunes on this 20-song binge stretch out painfully into what feels like forever.

The boring beats and throwback rhyme flow (circa 92)--which is weak even by Edmontonian standards--put Afterparty Babies somewhere beneath Don Cash’s home demos and the outtakes from Organized Rhyme’s Huh? Stiffenin’ Against The Wall.

This isn’t music so much as it is economic exploitation of a demographic.

Without any clever arrangements or production gimmicks to rely on, Keys tries to compensate for the obvious shortcomings by oversinging each syllable in a way that would make Patti LaBelle cringe.

A deadly dull set of cliché-packed piano ballads probably isn't the best way for aging harmony synchers to prove to their shrinking tween audience that the old Boys (sans Kevin Richardson) have still got it.

In real snap-music fashion, everything's repeated to death over tinny, cellphone-tailored little synthesizer riffs with snares.

The painful White Chalk is either a studio experiment gone horribly wrong or a crafty bit of career self-sabotage by a sensitive artist who'd rather make sculptures in the desert than play pop star.

Rather than the thoughtful songcraft and inspired peformances of Banhart's pre-Roberts Young God recordings, what you hear now is the zoned-out noodling of someone who foolishly believes his own genius hype.

Will.i.am has to be one of the worst rappers of all time, a fact his solo album doesn't just confirm, but stamps in red.

Sadly, this landfill isn't biodegradable.

Redundant, needlessly long, Those The Brokes rarely matches the 60s California-dreamin' good-vibes pop of its successful self-titled predecessor.

The novelty of it all has quickly worn thin.

A combination of insipid songs and uniformly soulless performances, it deserves high placement among the other legendary Macca misfires Pipes Of Peace, Press To Play, Off The Ground, Tug Of War and Red Rose Speedway.

It seems as if they've done everything possible to distance themselves from their original, much more interesting sound, opting instead for songs with barely enough hooks and coherent structures.

Try as they might to sound different, or even to touch on issues bigger than their own narcissistic garbage, LP still sound like they're stuck back in 00, which is where they should have stayed.

A dreary dump of sad sack pop blather that makes poor use of the substantial talent on hand.

Even Linda Perry, Swizz Beatz, Nellee Hooper and the Neptunes have their share of duff tracks, and it appears that's all they had to offer when Stefani came calling.

Jay proves that, yes, he really has nothing more to say except to state the fact that he's back.

His flow is generic and instantly forgettable and his lyrics are trite, inconsequential and full of self-importance.

Most of this over-egged sissy-boy schlock would make James Blunt wince.

Unfortunately, all the intricately picked little guitar figures don't make his raspy yelping sound any less like a wet cat stuck under a couch.

Though Storch and other heavy hitters do their best to craft reasonable facsimiles of a broad range of Today's Best Dance-Pop Hits, they can't hide the fact that Hilton's a shit singer who can't carry a tune even when the vocal melody is reproduced note-for-note in the arrangements.

The Audience's Listening is kinda like a Fatboy Slim B-sides collection circa 1998 without the catchy bits.

Unfortunately, Furtado doesn't have the rhyming skills, vocal chops or attitude to pull off any one of her new personae.

Considering the expensive talent involved, this is a colossal disappointment.

A floundering mess that bores you to tears.

A lilting acoustic-y record with ethereal leanings, plenty of canned, overproduced studio gloss and occasional dangerous forays into mild rock.

Two-thirds of the songs fail to cohere.

Uniformly mediocre.... It leads one to assume he's either lost the ability to discern the padding from the profound or he just didn't give a shit.

Unbearably bland.

P.O.D.'s new album sounds exactly like all their other ones.

So while Yellowcard's hearts may be in the right place, it's clear they're simply incapable of realizing this clumsy faux magnum opus.

This is a dry affair dominated by standard-issue R&B production monotony, and an egregious misuse of resources.