The lyrics are brutal.

A sense of mood or inner life is glimpsed. But by that point [the final third of the album], it just seems like an echo of past glories.

A pretty lightweight disc.

It’s difficult to hear this as anything but self-parody.

[The] fourth LP is lazy through and through despite throwing up waves of explosive sex-and-death rock and roll.

Love, Hate And Then There’s You isn’t entirely devoid of entertainment value--Stollsteimer’s misguided attempts to replicate the successful sound of the Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, the Strokes and other alt-rock radio staples at the time these songs were conceived turns out to be quite funny, however unintentional the humour.

Most of Shock Value confirms that Timbaland is most valuable when he's in the background.

The gusto with which Springsteen delivers the many verses of Froggie Went A-Courtin' leaves me wondering if the millionaire everyman is simply unaware that his country is at war.

Ambitious, high-concept albums are one thing, but Posse's just a boring mess.

Garbage still have a knack for placing sticky hooks behind walls of guitar sheen, but when they slow down on Beloved Freak and the title track ballad, the results get a bit cringy.

This time Karl Hyde and Rick Smith team up with a revolving cast of dance producers (Appleblim, Al Tourettes, High Contrast), hoping one of the many approaches to rock-meets-techno will again produce a bankable hit. Surprise! That doesn't happen.

Sure, your tweenage little sister will probably love this album, but I’m sorry, if she was even partially aware of hiphop and R&B music for the last decade or so, she’d know how much pilfered production and recycled rap is crafted here.

To make listeners' hearts melt, there's a lullaby for Joel's daughter, Harlow, a bit of a cynical move when most of the album is about sleeping with other radio stars, getting wasted like it's your birthday and getting wasted, sleeping with someone, blacking out and thinking it was the best night of your life.

Lyrics are heavy-handed (especially on the Papa Don't Preach rip-off Keeping My Baby), melodies are forgettable, and her voice has little charm or personality. Disappointing.

The music still branches off into proggy places, especially in the latter half, but nothing hits hard or is remotely memorable.

It seems like they decided to go whole hog with the Duran Duran template. Not the best strategy, considering it isn't even working for Le Bon and company any more.

His usually formidable voice could have saved it, but he often sounds like he's struggling to hit the notes.

Like the Double Down monstrosity, the first bite is an odd mix of tasty and disgusting, but by the end of it you just feel ill and ashamed.

Overall, the impression is of an assembly-line product manufactured on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon.

Too often it feels as if they’re all going through the motions, opting to play it safe, while Oberst himself seems bored and uninterested.

The five-piece’s attempts at New Order-style electronica (after previously aping Dylan, Stones, Britpop, then reggae on 2006’s Simpatico) add a new dimension but can’t mask the lukewarm songwriting here.

When you listen to these gloomy trip-hop jams after their best work of the 90s, the results are underwhelming.

Occasionally beautiful, often irritating.

While the minimal production and closely miked vocals on her debut emphasized the pop hooks and her fragile voice, Li and producer Bjorn Yttling (Peter, Bjorn & John) give listeners a more all-encompassing, if familiar, sound on Wounded Rhymes, nestling her vocals amidst girl-group harmonies, psych organ and shambolic percussion.

There is an unexciting emphasis on precision and minimalism that saps the emotional heat from an otherwise interesting fusion of styles and sounds.

An album that vacillates between raucous and refined without losing sight of the dance floor.

The songs here are saturated with detail: ornate swirls of neoclassical lyrics, melodies that slither, then loop in on themselves, layers of sonic textures and feral noises. And too often, tunes with good bones cave in under that weight.

Unfortunately, the grand concept appears to have been a bit too ambitious for the 24-year-old Newsom and her associates to pull off, since what she plucks and sings in her little-girl-lost warble never seems entirely integrated with the hovering orchestral parts that sound like bleed-over from a symphony rehearsal in the room next door.