The Second Round isn't much different from the first.

Unfortunately, unlike Deerhoof's complex sonic and logical experiments, the Curtains' material feels too spare, too underdeveloped, less like well-honed songs than fledgling ideas that'd benefit from the input of additional bandmates.

Gillespie will definitely need it [a new Mamma Mia-loving audience] once long-time-Primals fans hear all the twee synth-tweaked frivolity and snappy handclaps where the sleazy, distorted rock ’n’ roll jams should’ve been.

Ultimately, your appreciation of the quaintly crafted pop ditties on Soft Airplane will depend on your tolerance for listening to an adult male trying to sound like a naive little boy.

This is background music for a mundane clerical job at Medieval Times or cash duties at a fantasy sword store. But why not just pick up an old Jethro Tull record?

Much of his old work still sounds more vital.

Ultimately, though, the comp is uneven, and it's difficult to determine the intended audience; fans likely already own these songs.

While Big Sean is a charismatic and occasionally clever rapper, he often fails to dominate the big production elements he rhymes over.

There are some pretty moments, and the production is immaculate, but it's plodding and dull for the most part.

This is no-frills rawk that's been dumbed down for mass consumption.

Spears is immersed in an often trite, intensely narcissistic look at her existence, crafted almost entirely by songwriters other than herself. That’s not to say that some of the songs aren’t catchy or danceable, but they’re wasted on a singer who brings no real personality along for the ride.

Leave A Light On, for example, sounds an awful lot like the Rio-era ballad Save A Prayer. Unfortunately, these doppelgangers are the album's best songs, which makes you wonder why the band bothered.

After years and years of hating every ounce of Maryland's mall-punk icons Good Charlotte, it seems now that the actual trick to enjoying their music on any plausible level is to go into the whole thing with absolutely no expectations. Not even low expectations. Nothing.

Instead of knocking out another wall-shaking psych rock blast... Avatar comes off like a series of sedate recital pieces performed from sheet music while seated in the round.

The album could've been distinctive but instead lacks depth or the transporting quality of her imaginative lyrics.

The most surprising letdown, though, is vocalist Luke Top's decision to sing mainly in English, which only serves to highlight his shortcomings as a lyricist and emphasize an unfortunate nasal quality that didn't seem nearly as annoying in Hebrew.

What's missing is the emotional heat.

Aussie collective Architecture in Helsinki return with an awkward mess of shrieking faux island riddims and embarrassing rump-shaking elasto-funk.

Mostly, though, it's the usual whining about his tortured life as as a once-celebrated pop star and being unloved in a harsh world, but with fewer droll song titles and clever couplets.

You get what sounds like Karl Hyde doing freestyle slam poetry overtop of dull beats on 'Ring Road.' 'Crocodile' starts off promising but then gives up and becomes a backdrop for a one-syllable nightclub with white sofas.

The highlight is the laid-back Across The World with B.o.B, where Pitbull gets introspective for a minute. “Mr. 305” is at his best when tying together different styles, but the mindless, misogynistic filler on tracks like Full Of Shit and Girls sours the album as a whole.

The features wouldn't be so bad if Game didn't yield to the wattage and personalities of his co-stars. (Again, he can rap when he tries.) Used as a constant crutch, however, they quell his ferocity.

The Sexyback single makes wise use of filtered vocals to artificially deepen his tone and support his macho pose, but only so much can be done with studio gimmicry. He's soon back to tweeting his game in a prepubescent chirp; the more suggestive his come-ons, the funnier it gets.

Aoki relies heavily on guests to pad out Wonderland, with mixed results.

He clutches that control so tightly that the album has turned out insular and ill-conceived.

Scott goes for spacey sounds, stoner vibes and vocal filters, but despite the eclecticism, he's too elusive and bland for Rodeo to amount to a stylistic--let alone a subversive--statement.

Gaga has wrenched herself away from dance-pop to focus on the country and classic rock influences that have always been present in her music, albeit gussied up like a coked-out drag queen stumbling out of a bar at 4 am.

The band can still come up with strong hooks, and some of the 80s guitar rock references hit their mark, but the results are sabotaged by singer Julian Casablancas, who sounds like he’s conserving all his energy and passion for his next solo record.

No doubt Kingston can write a tune that sticks in the ear like a small insect. But just like having an insect in your ear, once the novelty wears off, it starts to get irritating.

Truthfully, it's a mellow Sunday afternoon after a hard night's clubbing: perfectly pleasant, but quite forgettable.

Songs like 'Death' and 'Nothing To Give' are strident due to big production and well-placed hooks. But commercially geared goth is so much more hideous than the real thing because it wants to be palatable and accepted.

Temperance might dull his inspiration, but it can’t shake his confidence. Unfortunately, that smugness is also his undoing: there’s no quality control here.

Stylistically, their fourth record doesn't depart much from previous ones.

Repeatedly tries to regenerate the neo-soul-pop formula of I Try, down to its beat pauses and rich, piano-driven arrangements.

The album repeatedly teases you with glimpses of the unhinged, earnest urgency that made the Violent Femmes semi-famous, and then flips into an annoying faux naive whimsy just as you’re starting to enjoy it.

It could have worked, but the dated production style bogs it down.

Sitek lends the band some nice slow-burning electronic atmosphere, but the songs lack hooks and sometimes shift into cringey faux-reggae.

Her pain is less harrowing – she's older now and knows how to cope -– so instead of singing only for herself, she's doing it for her listeners, a noble goal but also dull and predictable.

It sounds like FutureSex, so you’ll desperately listen over and over hoping to replicate how that album made you feel and end up surrendering to its pleasant, sanitized soundscape. But you’ll feel nothing.

Hard-hitting drum rolls, reverb and hooky guitar refrains are all over the album, so it’s a shame that it still grows stale by the end.

Another Fine Day sounds less like a party platter made by boozing buddies than a desperate attempt by yesterday's alt-country stars to slap together tunes that wouldn't sound out of place between Journey and Fleetwood Mac on classic rock radio.

The songs are formulaic but catchy, and the production is meticulous.

Phil Ramone’s austere production seems designed to let Lynne’s voice carry the album, and that’s a big mistake, since she has neither the emotional range nor the soulful finesse to convey the real hurt at the core of this material.

Unfortunately, their sixth studio album, Anthem, has neither the undeniably sweet earworms of their first effort nor much of the catchy soul-rock they’ve produced since.

Fans might find it a fascinating revelation, and Madonna will likely swipe a few ideas, while everyone else is left wondering what happened to the tunes.

While Tony Iommi churns out stock riffs, Devil You Know’s success largely depends on whether you can take Dio seriously--not as a vocalist (he’s one of the best in the metal game), but as a diminutive old man bellowing innocuous dungeons-and-dragons lyrics, and so unconvincingly that you have to wonder if he actually believes a single word. This record doesn’t make a strong case.

On the whole, L-Shaped Man feels like a boring exercise: a band performing post-punk idolatry (Root Of The World could pass for poppier Public Image Ltd.) instead of bothering to try anything new.

The album is also comfortably ignorant of the times. With its feathery production and common pop arrangements, it could have come out in 1996.

Like Snoop’s documentary of the same name, Reincarnated has its moments but needs an editor.

There are some glimmers of pop gold.... But those moments are overshadowed by dated cheeseball synth presets, uninspired choruses, goofy samples and clunky rhythm programming.

Production, shared by J, Young Chop and Mike WiLL Made-It among others, at times subtly nods to the menacing beats of early Three 6 Mafia but is otherwise bland.

There are a handful of feel-good moments. ... But it’s not enough to carry the bloated 18-song track list to a satisfying end. Instead it feels like getting caught in an endless kaleidoscope of solipsistic nostalgia. The effect is suffocating in its repetitiveness.

His voice is bland and has little variety.

50 is back with his larger-than-life persona and even bigger Mack 11, remaking his classic first album for the second time, with tiresome results.

The biggest problem beyond the recycled rhymes is the production. There are lots of beatsmiths on hand here, but none even come close to doing what the Neptunes did for them on their proper albums.

This disc comes off like an early home demo for a mediocre New Pornographers recording before all the bright colours and drama get added.

Awkward and embarrassing, the mixtape as a whole feels like a PR move to get you to listen to Nash-free embedded song Silly by new protégé Casha.

Somehow, fond recollections of the bad old days in the ghetto with fellow superstar Wyclef Jean just don’t have the same resonance and uplifting power as previous songs that came from a place of near-defeat and unfulfilled aspirations.

As if the synthesized strings and electronic dabbling weren't sad enough, [Spektor's] ascerbic voice has been all but lost in squishy couplets about making things better and needing to "know you."

His subjects are the standard sex/money/hustler/romance/gangster fantasies, and all the new-millennium fast life references you expect.

Admirable attempts are made to emulate tourmates Lymbyc Systym on Blank Pages, but they fall short of that band’s visceral energy and edge.

LeBlanc's garbled vocal delivery only serves to obscure weak lyrics.

They've delivered faithful, appreciative renditions, but the elephant-in-the-room question is why anyone would cop this disc instead of an H&O best-of.

Miller's compositions are typically well crafted and slightly artier than what you'd hear on, say, a Josh Groban disc, but this isn't too far off that sort of pouty boy bellowing.

It's all soaring, boring hooks, ringing guitars cribbed from the last two decades of sad bastard Britpop and wussy vocals polished to a sleek finish that makes them ideal fodder for Hollywood soundtrack supervisors.

Where O was direct, raw and sober--cold and real in its confessional heartbreak--MFFF is aimlessly wistful and therefore more difficult to connect with.

That comedy gap between concept and finished product appears to be par for the course with Black's ventures.

Kasher has zero ability to or interest in dialing down his drama and giving Cursive’s highbrow emo rock room to breathe.

Everything moves in linear fashion backwards, with only Danger Mouse’s bold battering saving Beck from a horrifying relapse into dreary Sea Change melancholia.

On a disc that ultimately exhausts itself with boredom and clichés, it's just not worth it.

The bulk of Boys is sufficiently well put together; the generally witty pop walks that tricky line between edginess and accessibility.

Interesting, but not mind-blowing.

Top-loaded with impenetrable stabs at noise-rock-infused rap, Cherry Bomb is a frustrating exhibition of musicality mired in Tyler, the Creator's contrary sensibility.

Yes, all the songs are nice and pretty, but there's something missing. It could be that in 2016 there's palpable nostalgia for mid-2000s indie rock (see Wolf Parade reunion tour). But it's the actual music from a decade ago that fans are yearning for, not necessarily the newest versions of the bands themselves.

His guttural howl on The Shrine/An Argument is the only moment when Helplessness Blues snaps out of its preciousness and hints that this genre can be more than a soundtrack to brunch.

The vocals, which in the past did a lot with a little and felt incantatory, androgynous and liminal, now sound uncannily like Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, a pseudo-teenaged smirk behind the frown.

A sleepy stretch of mediocrity that unfolds with lackluster monotony, Two Thousand once again fails to live up to the potential suggested by their One Time Bells debut.

Still, while we wait for a pop saviour to take the genre forward, Chromeo provide a nice enough tribute to its past.

Their fifth album, which is all hyperactive synth melodies and shrill sing-shouting in classic Matt and Kim style, sounds like it was smothered in thick syrup, drowned in glitter and then levelled out with soul-sucking effects for good measure.

Although Harris does her best with some tasteful harmonies to save the session from the usual Knopfler over-egging, there's only so much she can do.

There’s only so much nudge-nudge, wink-wink you can take before you want to shove a sock in the dude’s mouth. On the bright side, they stand a good chance of scoring a few top-40 hits with this dreck.

Skip the album purchase and download a few singles.

Most bizarre are the contributions of studio drummer Terry Bozzio, known for his work with Frank Zappa, who, despite his reputation as one of rock's most talented stick men, fails to sound heavy, menacing or even relatively interesting.

The problem is that he hasn’t yet developed a signature sound that immediately identifies a track as his own, nor is he capable of writing the sort of provocative rhymes that stand out.

The Brixton duo’s music fails to connect with any of the collaborating vocalists, to the point where you wonder if those involved were even in the same room together.

When you have to think this hard about music, it becomes a somewhat joyless ride, especially since Booth and Brown deny the listener a single danceable beat until track 10.

It'd be one thing if the new trio built on the band's legacy. Instead, Yours Truly regurgitates Sublime's 90s ska-punk blueprint and gussies it up with a new layer of radio-ready sheen.

It's not that The Captain & The Kid is a bad album; it just sounds terribly dated.

Unfortunately, the "deluxe edition" is bloated with filler, and the shorter "standard edition" omits some of the more creative songs instead of dropping the duds.

The 12 songs verge on inert, and singing is beginning to sound like a painful act for him. His lyrics, however, are inspired.

Aside from a couple tracks with standout hooks (Wild Gardens, The Better Plan), their songs are forgettable.

Butler might consider himself lucky he got out when he did, as Tricky’s ideas are scattered all over the place and Knowle West Boy is mostly a mess.

The unfamiliarity between Finn and his backing group is palpable.

Producer Alan Moulder (Depeche Mode, Interpol) helps them cautiously move into industrial territory, as on Turn The Bells. But if McVeigh's methods irked you before, they only get worse on Ritual.

Still their strongest effort since The W, but Wu-Tang Clan exhaust their fans' good will and nostalgia without a classic to show for it.

There are some sweet la-la-la bits and a bit of cheery whistling, but nothing jarring or abrasive which might prevent listeners from lapsing into a deep sleep by the sixth track.

This feels more like parody than an honest celebration of rock 'n' roll ridiculousness.

Over the course of an 11-track album like Red, Yellow And Blue, all the unison way-hoo-hay-oohing gets very annoying, especially when it comes bracketed by earnest yelping and long strummy passages that go nowhere in particular.