Full of baloney The Versions isn’t. But its muted—and sometimes rather predictable—approach only occasionally gets close to capturing the erratic wonder of Neneh Cherry in full flight.

The depth and breadth of the tracklist are commendable but often work against the band.

Tennant's mature gift as a lyricist is for sentimentality tempered by slyness, and he pulls that off a few times... Too much of Elysium, though, misplaces its subtlety.

It’s Surfer Blood’s first album since their debut that doesn’t invite you to think about what could have been. It simply makes the most of what is.

WHY? has never been a subtle band, but they’ve also never been this overwrought.

At least he hasn't lost his wry sense of humor. But about this newfound singing business: Argos has discovered a voice that sounds a bit like Jarvis Cocker's, only if he'd lost it after a long night out drinking-- a little hoarse, whispering low so as not to upset the hangover.

These aren't songs meant to jump out at you, but spend some time with them and little illuminations flicker to life.

It's an unrefined, poorly calculated mess.

Although it's unlikely that Stuart David will ever become as gifted a songwriter as Stuart Murdoch, he's crafted a distinctive sound with this band. The Geometrid serves as a charming, if slight, pleasure, but with more time to devote to the project, Looper may yet create a more substantial sound.

The distraction of blatant unoriginality aside, Rare Forms' biggest problem is its lack of compelling structure, with a whole lot of atmospheric haze.

The-Dream's deft "That's My Shit" is a return to that just-right poise of the serious and silly.... The rest of The Crown EP does not thread the needle quite so gracefully.

The best moments all come courtesy of his guests. ... While Rich the Kid busily squanders goodwill, what a more engrossing rapper might have made of it.

Too often on Port of Miami 2, he locks into the flow of least resistance and simply lets it ride, hiding behind his production instead of asserting his dominion over it. And while his music remains sumptuous as always, that luster alone is no longer enough to wow.

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.

The long list of guests here indicates a record in need of some padding, but most of these names provide little more than hook fodder.

If Circus isn't a front-to-back triumph, it's got enough juice in it to forgive the occasional misfire.

A Hundred Million Suns is rife with the sense of a band striving to be taken more seriously, whether through rocking more manfully, displaying a more sophisticated subtlety, or simply stringing together three ponderous, already-overlong songs and calling the impenetrable result a 16-minute stand-alone epic.

On Deceiver of the Gods, they are satisfied with plugging 10 new anecdotes into 10 songs they’ve made before and, unfortunately, will most likely make again.

For all its blatantly ill-conceived moments, there's something charming about the sheer audacity of Derulo's often bizarre choices. Even when it falls flat, there is character here.

While Cosentino is anxious to figure out who she’s become, Fade Away points to how strong she’s been all along.

inc. is both faithful to its source material and clever enough to twist it into new shapes, but at least for the time being, no world is unlikely to bring the Ageds out of the shadows.

The nine tracks that made up The Arizona Record are more satisfying on their own.

It's possible that the cumulative deadening effect of Miracle Mile is intentional, or that the contrast between the vacuous music and the spiritual ennui of the lyrics is supposed to be ironic. But Miracle Mile doesn't seem smart enough, musically or lyrically, for that to be the case.

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.

More than a stocking stuffer but less than an idol, Rihanna has grown into one of the most reliable pop stars we've got.

This generation-crossing collaboration feels like a record lodged in a sort of chronological rut, one where a young artist fronts an old-sounding record that sounds like it could've been released at any point in his lifetime--and helmed by any number of MCs that could've sounded like him.

The brio of an amateur would almost have to be preferably to the overzealous professionalism of Beautiful Lie, whose frilly "classicist" pop gets all dressed up to go absolutely nowhere.

It's a series of vignettes and at its best it reminds me of amorphous copy/paste artists like Prefuse 73, musicians who wormed their way into a genre by nibbling at its edges.