It’s sure not a knockout, but it’s his hardest-hitting album yet. Just don’t call it a comeback.

So, Danja hooked up Duran Duran with some seriously dope beats and nasty Neu-ish grooves for Red Carpet Massacre, way hipper stuff than they even know. The downside is that Simon LeBon is still singing and writing all the lame lyrics.

By rights, this should feel cloyingly sentimental, but Vandervelde’s musical virtuosity means it’s beguilingly exotic, particularly album opener 'I Will Be Fine'--an insomniac’s echoey hymn to the pre-dawn hours.

The patient, thoughtful strokes here are sometimes interesting but rarely exciting.

My Guilty Pleasure is a very listenable album, with plenty of high points, but overall it tends to fade into the background a little too easily.

Searching for depth in an emcee so obviously beholden to gimmicks is a fool’s errand, and if you give that up, you’re rewarded with low-stakes perfectly inoffensive jams.

Eschewing the indie rock tag, Born Ruffians are embracing a new diversified sound that reaches beyond the guitar-bass-drums trifecta, and for the most part, it hits the mark.

He’s stepped outside of his comfort zone of Long Beach City-inspired beats, and the result is his best offering in years.

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.

For all of Lady Gaga’s talking points, the fusion of art and pop has resulted in a lot of familiar dance-pop--more artful for its campiness than its musical innovation.

Bizarre lyrics, wooze-inducing dissonance and overly elaborate embellishments maintain Friedberger's genius-of-pretension title.

What made the band so charming--their indiscernible vocals, the prickly, overbearing guitars, the lo-fi grittiness of it all--has been lost in the makeover.

For an undisguised, heavy-handed topical Neil Young record, The Monsanto Years is actually engaging and mostly effective.

More a lyricist than a singer, he gruffly talk-sings through much of it, making it hard to grab hold of melodies.

T.I. vs T.I.P. suffers from its star's inability to commit to character.

Perry’s ballads are so unadventurous and heavy-handed (chiming U2 guitars and slow-building, reverbed drums), they start to feel like caricature anyway. Her approach works better on the feel-good half of the album made up of top-notch roller-disco anthems.

Cabaret with Drake has a catchy hook and gorgeously cheesy lyrics only Timberlake can pull off. The countrified Drink You Away almost works. The rest is forgettable.

Bad Religion’s Christmas album is one of the most unusual in recent memory.

This album is well-crafted and smart.

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.

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.

Unfortunately, her adventurous side is rarely heard in the more radio-friendly jams, which are heartfelt and catchy but less inspired.

If you're not paying close attention, it's the kind of music that seems pretty but a little too straightforward. But delve into it and the layers open up, making you realize how rich it actually is.

The result is an album with chart-worthy songs that are uncomfortably familiar at times and a touch low on risk.

It's not a tasteful formula, but that doesn't mean it's not valid.

The songs are pretty much middle-of-the-road, generic radio alt-rock devoid of any real personality.

At times, these preoccupations feel clumsy in their topicality, and it's hard to tell whether GOF's unthinkably long history as a Band That Has Things To Say makes this more or less forgivable.

Some Nights could be the breakthrough album that propels Fun. to the arenas where their lack of self-restraint will finally make sense.