Soft Opening maintains a sort of oddball consistency in this regard, but is ultimately so aimless, messy, and at times beyond tedious, it hardly matters how many hands were in its pot.

The versions of Winehouse's repertoire that turn up on At the BBC's audio disc, though, are almost all sloppier than their studio counterparts, and she rarely manages to reveal anything we didn't already know about her songs.

Ghost Wave get comfy in simplicity, tone, and tempo, and maintain that true course for the rest of the record. There’s a great, mid-60s Stones energy that runs underneath Ages that keeps the whole thing hearty and on its heels. But Paul’s faux-lysergic lyricism peppered throughout is never as focused as something like the Stones' “19th Nervous Breakdown”, even though he matches that jaunty cadence often.

A charitable perspective might see the band's embrace of pub rock as a conscious rejection of political correctness in the form of so-called good taste; the reality is that it seems like a last-ditch attempt to aestheticize a sublime lack of inspiration.

Come Around Sundown is, and it ends up being no different from a lot of the phony populism in the air these days.

There is nothing original or novel about Telekinesis' music, but somewhat counterintuitively, its by-the-books professionalism is what makes it so effective.

Love Goes, Smith’s third album, unfortunately fails to deliver on the promise of “How Do You Sleep?” The album is clumsily split in two, with no regard to sequencing; it begins with a collection of bubbling, at times electric songs spanning melodic funk, pulsing deep-house, and mid-tempo pop, before abruptly veering to five messy ballads that would be better delivered via Hallmark card.

Large chunks of MDNA are shockingly banal, coming across not so much as bad pop songs per se, but as drably competent tunes better suited to D-list Madonna wannabes.

Oceans Will Rise is not a bad album, but it is very much the sound of a band still trying to figure out who they are--and in fairness, they have lost and gained a member since their first record. But three albums into a career, they should have a better idea than this.

The upshot of these six tracks seems to be that Adult. have been listening to a hell of a lot of Bauhaus. And I have to give them credit: They've followed that impulse right out to the sweet spot.

[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.

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

Turns out, so-called mini-Mariah can hold her own in 2014; and while the best songs here may not be timeless, they certainly feel right for right now.

While Funplex's super-sized dance pop can't quite compare with the band's best moments, there's plenty of residual B-52's-ness to satiate longtime fans.

Given the far sunnier cast of the group's debut, it's fair to say Now or Heaven is a document of growing pains.

Super Extra Gravity is too deft to be too dark, though-- there's joy in its catharsis.

At best, the verses, bridges, and instrumental passages feel custodial, doing little to disturb the flow so that the chorus can deliver a proper dynamic boost. Mostly, they just feel like Guards killing time, and Follin's power-pop Madlibs make the 45 minutes of In Guards We Trust feel significantly longer.

Like a child playing dress-up with their parents’ wardrobe, Only Run’s impulsive change-ups can result in some ill-fitting looks.... Fortunately, Only Run finally hits its stride in its more focussed second half, with Ounsworth and Greenhalgh strategically building upon simple ideas rather than trying to cram them together and see what happens.

Try as you might, searching for vestiges of the ol' Morcheeba is futile.

Occasionally the devotion to six-string mayhem overwhelms the songwriting, and unless you really get off on reams of guitar raunch, Major Stars on CD may still not be for you.

A restless and sometimes laborious album that attempts to spotlight all of Enslaved's parts in one very overbearing package.

Delete two-thirds of I’m the Problem, whose back-end filler tracks are not even worth noting (save for the bizarre “Miami,” which sounds like a The-Dream song for the Don’t Tread on Me set), and a more interesting album emerges.

Whether or not they've produced anything that justifies the time away they could have spent producing something better, more consequential, by themselves? Well, the jury's still out there.

Any record that emphasizes variety will have a few tracks that fall just outside the artist's reach; not everything works quite so well, although that has more to do with song choice than execution.

The rest of the album’s expansive epics are built on a shaky foundations, with too many songs that contain too many concepts for their own good.

It is not, strictly speaking, a good record—Eminem hasn’t made one of those in a decade—but it boasts enough technical command and generates just enough arresting ideas to hold your attention.

In the end, Barbara could've been made by a computer with a specific coding procedure: bass riffs align themselves into right angles, sharp synth lines blare, hi-hats sizzle, hooks dissolve on contact, and 2004 never ends.

On the whole, Cómo's not a weaker album than "YTK," but it sounds like it's overcompensating for its likely increased exposure.