Based on Rated R, Rihanna's artistic aspirations are currently loftier than her abilities. Then again, her tenacity in the face of the unimaginable public humiliation this year is beyond brave.

Most of the songs are toss-offs, but it's plenty of fun to be along for the ride as long as some restraint is issued. Without it, ForNever alternately struggles to keep its head above water with washed-out cautionary tales ("The Problem Is...") or slums it in the shallows with mildly tawdry goofs ("Asian Girl").

The album could use a little more of Fitzgerald's fiery extremes, and a bit less of meandering disappointments like "You Looked Good to Me" or "Dancing in the Stacks", but at its best it's a clever piece of musical storytelling by a band unintimidated by genre.

"Dandelion Gum" was speckled and silly and high as shit. Eating Us feels more like the baseline: collected, repeatable, respectable.

For a man who’s lived and breathed rave culture, his album about the experience is strangely lacking in highs.

Rewild is how an average debut album should pan out. It might outstrip its ambition and wear its influences too blatantly, but Amazing Baby could be something special once it all clicks.

Nas’ kingship goes down easy over Hit-Boy’s clean drums and neat arrangements, which indulge Nas’ nostalgia without kowtowing to it. ... When Nas’ rhymes aren’t clumsy, his storytelling is.

The group envelops the different elements of music available to them-- from folk, to rock, to Gram Parsons-influenced pop-- in such a way that is alternately enjoyable and excessively off-putting.

While State Hospital lacks for pure visceral pleasure, Hutchison can still convey such a deep, muscular ache in his vocals, indicating that Frightened Rabbit still know their strengths.

Ultimately, Sean's a likable character.

Despite these flashes of wit, the band’s Achilles’ heel is Baron-Gracie’s generic songwriting, which becomes most apparent when the tempo slows.

Easy to dismiss, smirk at, or even hate on the fist listen, nine out of The Snare's ten tracks are grind-and-pause, semi-sultry pairings of exotic keyboard settings and mid-tech beats that exploit their refrains and come weirdly close to the patterns of 'risqué' after-dinner radio pop circa 1999-present.

Our Pathetic Age reflects the way much of Shadow’s post-Endtroducing material has lacked structure, with the producer happy to throw ideas at the page, even if many of them don’t stick.

Prisoner is marred by weak analogies (“colder than Minnesota,” “buzz like Georgia Tech) and Kweli’s bumpy writerliness (“ornithology” and “onomatopoeia” are just two less-than-melodious words used here), leading this to be his most underwhelming record yet word-for-word.

Speck Mountain still have some distance to travel before they fill an album with such moments, so that whenever you hear their music, you think of them first rather than their influences. But this is only their second full-length, and it's a solid step in that direction.

Another Day on Earth is produced to within an inch of its life, with layers of intricate detail and the most ethereal synth washes imaginable.

The Solution is a deeply schizophrenic record, one that completely divorces Beanie's cocksure swagger from his introspective depth.

They’re still making some alluring music, yet their albums have never sounded more disjointed.

So Sewn Together is gently rustic, occasionally (a bit) heavier than you might expect, and ready for any adult-leaning-but-alternative-friendly playlist. It's also pretty bland, and at worst banally melodramatic in ways that suggest the unfortunate arrival of the Meat Puppets power ballad.

Even if a lot of Heartbeat Radio is affable and politely poppy, a lot of it is so pointedly bland that you can't help but wonder if the good stuff stands out only because of the beige filler around it.

Frustratingly, what should be the album's best song isn't on the album.... A creative chameleon with endless wells of technical skill, Worden stuffs Shark's Teeth with studied know-how.

Sometimes, the veteran Detroit rapper transcends his natural Buddenism, avoiding corny punchlines, esoteric lyrical easter eggs, and bars that lead him nowhere. At other times, he doesn’t.

Nobody's ever going to this guy for clear, concrete ideas; abstract obfuscation is what he does. On Hello Cruel World, he finds some new ways to do it. They don't work out as often as we might hope, but at least he's trying.

From here on out, Screws Get Loose starts sounding like the work of a retro-pop outfit, treading the same ground covered by the Raveonettes, the Donnas, and recent revivalist indie heroes Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls.

The result is disarmingly tender, adding a few heartfelt minutes of warmth and personal connection, something lacking in the rest of Dreams' gloss.

Unfortunately, none of these songs actually feel like songs. Only a few have choruses or any significant chord changes. Instead, they're set pieces, which makes sense.

The lack of technique gives Reasons to Live an unfinished quality that suggests there's either more depth than there appears to be, or an underlying emptiness deriving from too much feral energy and not enough songwriting.

Sometimes wars are won with persistence and numbers alone, after all. And in any case, when you're cruising along in a pleasure craft as nice and reliable as this one, it's all right to tread a little water.