The eerie voice blend still sends the occasional chill up the spine, and their songwriting continues to capture the painful earnestness of youth, but it all feels a bit staged.

Light, breezy and somewhat snoozy, Christopher has some pleasant moments, but it's not the strongest work in McPhun's discography.

A hardened, firsthand account of the preordained dire straits of the American underclass, and Waka Flocka Flame-indebted boast talk minus the charisma.

Most songs clock in under two and a half minutes but manage to say plenty.

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

The bigger problem is an overall lack of energy; there are only so many mid-tempo middle-of-the-road psych-pop songs you can listen to before starting to watch the clock.

His latest album is full of sexy slow jams, hip-hop samples and an overall tone better suited to a club than a lazy house party.

It's certainly not revelatory, but it makes no such claims.

Unfortunately, too many songs have that thin, cheap quality that so many indie dance bands were into a decade ago. Good thing they're so ridiculously catchy.

While some of her melodies could be a bit more defined, she's a nuanced enough performer to captivate at the most self-indulgent of times.

The best songs are the few featuring Keenan's lovely voice, like Teresa, Lark Of Ascension, which serves as a sad reminder of the talent we lost.

Not Tarantino's most essential soundtrack, but maybe his most original.

Fade isn't a drastic departure, but when you've polished your eclectic sound as well as Yo La Tengo has, that's not always necessary.

The melodies' stoicism seems to reflect much of the empty, brutal beauty of modern life.

The results are sometimes sharp, as on mischievous New York City and Here We Go Again, with their mirrored melodies reinterpreted on flute and sax. Other times, his lyrical directness relies on clichés--reminding us that love sometimes sounds quite ordinary.

A macabre mood keeps it cohesive and lends a cinematic quality, kind of like the A$AP Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The Polish-born, Brooklyn-based DJ, born Jakub Alexander, makes music that's as likely to induce sleep as a mild panic attack.

Too many of the tracks seem more like very good imitations of song types than like actual songs.

While the rhythms may seem like invitations to dance--or at least sway--the lyrics are almost uniformly bleak, making Pale Fire a late contender for saddest album of the year.

Thorn succeeds through low-key, simple arrangements and her empathetic, sensible voice, which has the all-seeing authority of a storybook narrator.

¡Tré! offers a few ballads, swelling string-laden anthems and even a six-minute medley à la American Idiot--styles that once represented a new aesthetic for the band but now sound forced and exhausted.

Despite solid production, the pop appeal of Nocturne doesn't quite transcend its 80s influences as well as Gemini's joyous, rough-hewn charms did.

While you might be tempted to skip it, spending some time trying to absorb what he's getting at gives you a much richer context in which to appreciate his songwriting.

You don't always know what cosmic tunnel Memory Tapes will drag you through, but you can always expect a metamorphosis.

There are missteps--Talib Kweli going through the motions on Get Your Way (Sex Is A Weapon), Ghostface's unfortunate pairing with Wiz Khalifa--but like the movie, the soundtrack is good, bombastic fun.

this sounds like the soundtrack to the hell of cheese-ball Las Vegas bottle service clubs.

It is a strikingly unique take on soul music in a year when there's a lot of competition from other R&B artists pushing the genre's boundaries.

The disparate guest list means the record lacks some cohesion, but Big Boi--ambitious, effusive and still a remarkably lithe rapper--holds it all together.