The rest of Washington Square Serenade ranges from good ('Days Aren't Long Enough,'a duet with wife Allison Moorer) to merely serviceable ('Red Is the Color').

Queen of the Wave just makes you lay prostrate at the feet of Pepe Deluxé in the hopes that you won't mind them relentlessly hammering you with tacky quirks and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.

There's nothing wrong with being down, and Simenon does it well. But what Back to Light boasts in studio acumen it lacks in personality.

Mendes spends nearly every minute bowled over by the power of love. It’s nice to see his cup overflow so bountifully, but the near-constant awe quickly grows tiresome, especially when conveyed through clichés like, “Your body’s like an ocean, I’m devoted to explore you” and, “You’re my sunlight on a rainy day.”

While Rundanns has all the makings of a late-career triumph, it’s less a new watermark for Rundgren’s sprawling discography than an analog to it: beautiful and baffling in equal measure, all over the map, and beholden to nothing but its own inexplicable logic.

My Morning Jacket is their least adventurous album yet. When they riff, they’re squarely within a July 4th classic rock block; when they vamp, it’s the fog-lit, psychedelic soul that’s invigorated their most recent work. In either form, they occasionally hint at their soaring, festival-ready populism, heady instrumental exploration, or fluency with the American songbook, but never the fusion that once came so organically.

One might suppose that solo album(s) from the chief Furnaces songwriter Matthew Friedberger would magnify his flaws/assets, and in the case of Winter Women and Holy Ghost Language School, one would be correct.

All in all, the sparks are overshadowed by poor choices and general lack of direction.

The cache of "weird" songs on Rape Fantasy is better than the tracks collected on Staying Alive.

It's all good enough, but how many times, really, do you need to hear the term "rock the mic" in an hour? Not this many.

Foxygen have perpetually raised the question: Do they really mean it? On Seeing Other People, they drop the act and give it to you straight: If you are getting tired of Foxygen, well, they are, too.

The debut album by these producers-turned-trio comes after blog-bait remixes galore, including a nice enough Postal Service-ish Vampire Weekend makeover, but there's little of those fine young Columbians' infectious exuberance here.

There's a weird outdated feel to the album; too many of the songs feel like attempts to cross over to a rap mainstream that barely exists anymore.

Even if every one of these tracks stands as a formal experiment unto itself, after an hour or two these half-formed ideas begin to bleed indistinctly into each other, evolving into puddles of vaguely ominous aural mush.

Death Cab still sound like Death Cab, but Codes and Keys is undoubtedly the least pop record they've made since breaking through to the mainstream with their last indie-situated effort, 2003's Transatlanticism.

With its patchwork (and, as of press time, unknown) 1992 sources, the set's neither particularly representative of Young live nor particularly different from the pleasant Harvest Moon album itself (cheering and lack of backing vocals, strings and session hands aside).

The detached, semi-ironic delivery doesn't play well with the perky club beats.

They remain a surprisingly divisive band, with detractors accusing them of imitating rather than innovating. Desert Skies does absolutely nothing to answer that criticism, but it does provide a useful point against which to measure their later efforts.

Even at their best, though, Noah and the Whale struggle to overcome a trying-too-hard odor that permeates everything they do right down to that ill-advised band name.

Fans of Lewis or Dawson aren't gonna care much that this isn't holy grail stuff; if you've been following either, you're used to a little unevenness. But the true superfans have likely heard the best of these tunes before, on the AFNY comp.

The album's bluesy tenor does wonders to mitigate its shortcomings, something that the debut's spacious environs couldn't do. With Fool, the problems mostly reside in the words that Bones sings.

Pop singers certainly don't need to reinvent music production to be gripping, but Esser's debut doesn't strain or stretch creative boundaries or hit that perfect balance between playful and experimental in the same way that contemporaries like Micachu and the Shapes do.

Times changed; Dntel, less so. Aimlessness, his third album of new material, arrives without context, scene, or convenient narrative.

Legendary Weapons' greatest asset is nearly two decades of goodwill, but at what point are you just flat-out going to admit that Ghostface has been badly coasting downhill for at least five years?

Trouble Man's scattershot approach makes it the realest album the guy could make in 2012, but that doesn't make it any good.

The Great Escape Artist's intricate, heavily lacquered production--courtesy of Muse-man Rich Costey--has the effect of making Jane's Addiction sound like an anonymous assemblage of oversaturated recording tracks.

You can't deny that Cuomo feels no shame and is making exactly the kind of music he wants, and there's ultimately something disarming about that.

Unfortunately, on Planta, they only seem half-awake.

Tremors is actually kinda intriguing in a “canary in the coalmine” sort of way.

Mostly a failure, but with enough glimmers of a true comeback to tease fans into checking out the next one.

Manages to ignore the essential art-rock flourishes of Sound-Dust, and in fact, [has] done away with anything even remotely interesting or new.

Eventually Doughty is going to have to do something about his lyrics, because "The moonlight shines like a luminous girl tonight/ Yeah, Jesus Christ like a luminous girl tonight" isn't going to hack it.

Byrne and Slim never misstep here, but they also never surprise. At best you may wind up distantly admiring their craftsmanship.

With the Night Sweats, he’s elevated with grit and muscle, but strumming solo on And’s Still Alright, he gets bogged down in a melancholy murk.

What is unexpected is how Wilson sounds almost anonymous here. As he drifts through his greatest hits and personal favorites, he doesn’t invest his playing with much personality, so these smooth sounds are about as memorable as a piano twinkling away in the background of a department store.

While there is much to admire about Beal taking such an abrupt left turn at this crucial juncture in his trajectory, in this case, it’s one that, more often than not, leads to an aesthetic dead end.

Dave Matthews Band sounds best when it’s weird; the bummer on these songs is how bored the band sounds. But even as a cadre of producers smoothes out the band’s crunchiest tendencies, glimpses of the DMB’s ambitious musicianship shine through. These outliers aren’t always successful.

It’s not that the album is bland, it’s that it doesn’t really do anything or go anywhere.

Compared to the wool-sweater warmth of those early recordings ["Crocodile Rock", "Babies"] Oberhofer's sad-sack persona and yelping vocal ad libs come off here as less endearing and more desperate, like someone trying to oversell simple songs with eccentric affectation.

Far from being either vindicating or enthralling.

Every line is laid with the rich sense of rhythm and texture that he's mastered over the years, but it still adds up to very little: a wildly spiritual record without any spirit.

Whereas that band [Title Fight] used shoegaze and sludge as references and jumping-off points, Creepoid treat it like the whole point, and the album grows wearying long before it's over.

While the long tracklist and equally protracted verses make for an exhausting listen, there are rewards for those that endure.

They have general technical proficiency and a knack for a good riff, but listening to them is nevertheless a chore-- and a boring, repetitive one at that.

I can't deny Church is a solid craftsman capable of cranking out extremely inviting pop-rock hooks, but this ground is so well-trod that it's hard to find anything to get even a little bit excited about here unless you're relatively new to indie-rock patronage.

Lightning Bolt begins with a spirited sprint before sputtering out and winding up in dullsville.

Much of Happiness Ltd. suffers from one of the cardinal sins of radio-ready rock: stuffing unmemorable verses between overblown choruses.

Red Fang certainly sounds good on Whales and Leeches, with the production of the Decemberists multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk again giving their instruments ample breadth and weight. But they do not match that surface with substance.

Pretty much any way you slice it, Images Du Futur is just too clinical.

Subtle breakbeat drumming and glistening guitar be damned, Bono will ruin a song. And so the story goes for the entire album-- one of the band's finest, if not for the tweeting and hooting of The Fly and his grating lyrics.

To say that the album is over-produced is an understatement; you could bounce a quarter off of most of these songs.

Their search for large-scale anthems and keenness to replicate a formula that doesn’t come naturally to them leaves them sounding boxed in, and imbuing Heart of Nowhere with all the grace and flexibility of four concrete pillars.

Another Country just isn't nearly as consistently satisfying as Merritt's earlier offerings.

Native To is packed with well-executed, hummable stuff, but it wears thin quickly.

Mostly, From the Desk of Mr. Lady comes off like sub-standard material that didn't make it on to last year's full-length.

Unfortunately, the strings and horns rarely do much more than add a thin layer of dressing to the rather plain lettuce of the songs beneath.

Future is YACHT's would-be critique of our pre-dystopian, post-Internet culture, but it rarely comes off as more than a charismatic cover band singing us yesterday's news.

It's just that it feels so characterless and anonymous.

It would be a tall order to expect them to rival Frost's raw power, but these remixes don't unearth much fascinating stuff, and the EP turns out (mostly) competent but wan.

Although Cordae can be an engaging writer, on songs like “Momma’s Hood” his delivery is as dry as a teenager forced to read in class. “Jean-Michel” shows his competence as a rapper, but the song sounds like it’s reaching to be a classic ’90s rap interlude and landing at a Big Sean freestyle from L.A. Leakers.

A handful of tracks on Volume X are decent placeholders that do nothing to expand or appreciably reinforce the band’s aesthetic, but “Ice Fortress” stands out to represent everything Trans Am does right.

It's a soundtrack to a '70s made-for-TV movie, but a damn fine one.... But ultimately, Pelo is a triumph of average-- a zero-sum game. The few noteworthy tracks are negated by the bombs. For every standout, rare as they are, there are embarrassing nadirs like "Tom of Finland (An Homage)."

Hozier calls the album’s sound “eclectic,” but disjointed is more apt.

It's hard to actually consider Welcome a bad album, mostly because it has this inexplicable likability: It's bizarrely comic without coming across as cheap irony, and it's pretty clear Pants lays down these semi-instrumental jams because he wants to have fun and make noise with some once-expensive, now-dated (and, subsequently, currently underheard) musical machinery.

While ††† may be on the same scale as Deftones, they’re not a replacement, and it stands to reason that Moreno can ascend to the heights of their previous work. But on †††, it’s like he never had wings.

The album's laissez-faire production fails to anchor its quaint, melody-allergic songs. In turn, Elverum's retiring vocals float to the top, which is a horrible place for them.

[The album has] overproduced but underwritten pieces that seek to create atmosphere but mostly leave empty spaces that the Hundred in the Hands aren't sure how to fill.

Love and Distance is fucking cheesy.

It sounds good--Brown's detached, wispy/gritty voice is pleasing as ever, and I like a pop string arrangement as much as the next guy--but it doesn't add up to much in the end.

Unfortunately, too many of the songs highlight Starfucker's shortcomings, leaving them introspective, detached, and even timid. If this three-piece can learn to have as much fun in the studio as they do onstage, these fuckers might actually become stars.

In 1997, this kind of thing--crisp, echoing guitars, provincial strings, existential moodiness--actually sounded kind of exciting. Just over a decade later, though, the exact same recipe, prepared exactly the same way, conjures up new dominant aftertastes: false profundity, compositional laziness, and outsized egos.

While the band has certainly grown musically, it also seems less patient and focused; much of the record feels like a hastily recorded jam session with a few superfluous electro-bobbles floating above the fray.

TRON: Legacy Reconfigured succeeds as much as most remix projects do, which is to say about 50% of the time, and without Daft Punk's name attached to the project it's doubtful it would have attracted much attention.

A light but pervasive dusting of flanger effects and wavy-tuned synths makes the melodies sound cloudy and unfocused. Even the singles don't especially stand out.

What makes Reveal so disappointing is that the additions to the classic R.E.M. sound are all merely superficial. The increased reliance on burbling, jittering synthesizers actually makes the album a less engaging listen, turning many of its songs into messy sonic muddles.

Non-offensive, near-benign, and as if custom-built for the provocations of doing something else, Simulcast, like many Tycho works, is a reliably egoless experience, an art that approaches productivity-enhancing apparatus.

Banks could certainly go places--but Goddess doesn't, and instead seems content to wallow in the same depressive rut for an exhausting 59 minutes.

At times this sunny, heart-on-sleeve temperament seems harmless and even quite endearing. More often it simply grates: he’s too precious, too twee.

Unfortunately, The Fire Theft actually sees the band indulging in ersatz approximations of Yes and Genesis' epic odysseys much more deeply.

The good news is that "The Love Within," Bloc Party’s comeback track, an indie disco-pop hybrid that is somehow both garish and bland, is comfortably the worst song on Hymns. A little better is "So Real," which trails a Silent Alarm throwback riff over low-key soul and hangover-soothing deep house; on "The Good News," a similarly midtempo Blur pastiche, a down-and-out narrator trudges from "the Gospels of St. John" to the "bottom of a shot glass."

Calling them wack MCs isn't saying much though--they're the only MCs of their kind, competing only against themselves. No wonder they make music that sounds like it was made in a void: heart in the right place, perforated with off-key singing and C-grade rapping.

Every card Gough plays is painfully transparent from the first time you play the disc. It's elementary stuff. It sounds manufactured, refined, cosmetic and sterile; in a word, silicone, like a pair of Badly Sculpted Breast Implants.

Everything I Thought It Was brims with a misplaced confidence that can only be described as Timberlakean, laboring for such a long, long runtime under the misapprehension that a risk-averse mop bucket of last decade’s trending sounds is gonna hit through the sheer force of its performer’s waning charisma.

Tennant slaps his heart on his sleeve and gets on with things. The result isn't awful, although none of it is as spooky and playful as the cover of the Passions 'I'm In Love With a German Film Star' that the Boys produced for Sam Taylor-Wood last year.

Given the exploratory transience of Six Organs' catalogue, Shelter from the Ash feels too much like work, too much like what had to happen.

After six albums, Cabic has yet to build a discernible and discrete identity for this band. It remains the ongoing also-ran from a loose freak-folk confederation that’s splintered in a dozen surprising ways.

Perhaps it's partly a factor of Oberst's essential attention-grabbing nature, but none of these gentlemen offers up a composition that snags the ear better than the most mundane effort from their fearless leader.

Really, if your parents don't dig this, there's something wrong with them. This is music for the drive to pick up the kids from soccer practice, or to the doctor for dad's yearly prostate exam.

Boys and Diamonds bustles with African, Indian, and Caribbean rhythms, and boasts some genuinely interesting production in places. But the songwriting is ultimately too blocky and dull and slapped together for it to succeed as the thing it most wants to be-- a pop record.

All I Need had the potential to be so much more than mediocre and forgettable.

On The Gathering, though, the sonic vista is flattened out, resulting in a dreary, grayscale trudge of an album.

But when I say "neutral," unfortunately I mean pretty much exactly what you probably think I mean. The only track with an immediately memorable hook is his cover of 'Crimson and Clover.'

Taken as a whole, the album is exactly the sort of hastily tossed-off, forgettable project that legacy acts will sometimes tack onto can't-miss releases such as this. It's a shame they did.

Far more aggressive than any other record in their catalog - perhaps a preemptive response to charges of getting old and mellow. Unfortunately, that leaves the record rather homogenous.

The result is a strictly passerby album: one that is heard and then quickly forgotten.

It's a record that marks the time when the "Gucci Gucci" rapper's homegirl became notorious enough to do an album with Gucci Mane, and when Gucci Mane had fallen far enough to decide to go along with it.

On their second album, Tales from Terra Firma, they continue to be almost crushingly dull, making well-appointed and cheerfully empty music that successfully communicates next to nothing.

Defiantly sappy, Silence Is Easy survives mostly on Walsh's oddly graceful singing. Unfortunately, the music on the whole is prosaic, even boring at times.