Relapse can be an intermittently thrilling sonic experience until you realize everything sounds like a variation of 'What's the Difference,' 'If I Can't,' or even fucking '30 Something.'

The negatives far outweigh the positives... sounds entirely manufactured.

As long as the Low Anthem discount the idea that this music was once meant to stir the blood, rile the soul, and actually be exciting, it's always going to be historically inaccurate in a way no amount of sepia-toned ambience can overcome.

Secrets has its finger on the pulse of mainstream radio, judging from its oppressive sonics. But stuck between a tired, nebulously elucidated artistic direction and their own nebulously elucidated commercial aspirations, they just sound a whole lot like the major-label also-rans that they actually are.

The rest of the album is stuff he's done before and better.

He gathers the biggest names in rap, then has them make the same music they’d record on their own anyway. Sometimes staying out of the way works—the album’s first two singles were just Drake solo tracks with Khaled’s name on them. But the returns are never more than the sum of the talent involved.

The bulk of Gorgeous Johnny is unfortunately too earnest and too patient really to go anywhere in particular, preening like a collection of meticulously cleaned Travis demos or, at their worst, an Adam Green album without any of the dirty bits.

Unfortunately, all this talent behind the boards often feels like a waste because of Spektor's inability to let her songs stand on their own merits without the persistent interjection of vocal curlicues or verbal flights of fancy.

For a band that's lyrically so devoted to upsetting the order, Goatwhore sound unequivocally content with replaying the past.

As with nearly every R. Kelly album, sex is Untitled's raison d'être. But too often here he trips over trends.

With songwriting that veers between snoozy and face-palming, it's the kind of sophomore album that makes you question whether the debut deserved so much love in the first place.

Clark can, and hopefully will, do better. But for now he feels like a genuine talent unable to find a foothold.

Between the innocuously rambly music, Fite's toned-down vocal mannerisms, and this pencils-up-the-nose persona, Ain't is a record that's hard to dislike, but nearly impossible to imagine loving.

In the end, though, Everything Is Borrowed's musical high points aren't enough to save it from its lyric sheet, and that, going forward, constitutes a real problem for Skinner.

You get the sense they're shooting for something epic, something that would sound just as big as the pop bangers on radio, but the results are goofy.

Here, they shuffle through one stylistic experiment after another. The fingerprint on the album's cover art seems a little ironic, since for the first time, the Magic Numbers seem hard to identify.

If Sia spent more time at the piano, and/or hired Robyn to write her a couple of tracks, the results could be marvelous.

Perhaps unintentionally, Turning the Mind feels chemical itself--it's a cheap buzz that ultimately should have no problem finding its way into the wheelhouse of people who just can't get enough whooshy sound effects.

The band's third LP, Gramahawk, is pretty much a do-over in every conceivable way.

Tittsworth has produced, by and large, an album of potential novelty singles. That's fine--you can argue that some of the best records are novelty records--but the problem is that most of the tracks on 12 Steps are neither particularly novel nor memorable.

Despite the dual versions, Storytone never finds a comfortable middle ground: the orchestral versions too maudlin, the solo versions over-sharing.

Without much variety to spice it up, the overall sluggardly pace is energy-sapping. An album of the sort of tracks on which Eskmo earned his reputation might not have gone amiss before he ventured a more songwriterly statement, but there's no reason he can't regroup and pull that off yet.

Dream House forsakes even the grandiose manipulations of their EPs for a placid, empty surface. It looks good on paper. It will sound nice while you cook dinner. Then you’ll forget you ever heard it.

The R.E.D. Album will likely fade into obscurity immediately upon arrival, but if it doesn't raise some eyebrows around major label offices, then this is a failure of not just one person, but also of an entire industry.

In playing it this safe, Summer Camp is just another entry in an increasingly trivial catalog.

Fuzztone guitar and the occasional woodwinds dress up the many slow-paced songs, but repetitive, fragmentary compositions such as 'Paquita Reads by Candlelight,' Vancouver-repping 'Skeleton Aim,' and the typically moribund 'Come Darkness' sound more concerned with melisma than memorable melodies or vibrant production.

More often than not, however, Mice Parade pushes these songs down paths that don't fit.

Each of the 11 songs here are positioned at some point in an endless cycle of going out, scoping girls, getting drunk, making out, passing out, and “waking up in [your] clothes.” But for Skaters, such scenes are apparently so routine that they often sound disinterested in their own debauchery.