But with all the excitement and decadence drained out of the music and the voice, the trite themes stand out a bit more clearly.

The beats on Story never quite cohere, and tracks like 'Uncle Swac Interlude,' an endless phone conversation with Banner's drunk uncle, further interrupt the flow.

Like its unexpected stylistic kin My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges, Seeing Sounds finds its creators partaking in the subversively phallocentric narcissism of staring at their CD collections, confusing music listening with music understanding rather than enjoyment.

The band hasn’t done themselves any favors by sticking so closely to the sounds of their youth, either--not that they were ever going to top the pipe-bomb intensity of their earliest recordings, anyway.

The thoroughly unenjoyable Paralytic Stalks might be a sign that Barnes should take some time off and let the inspiration come to him.

There's a distinct lack of fun in the instrumental wankage of The Mix-Up, a bad sign for a band that has seen their results fade in direct proportion to how seriously they take themselves.

Too much of Blood Money represents something sad and fascinating-- two demons domesticated, two artists who have willfully transformed themselves into hucksters.

The band's new sound is nothing short of painfully, achingly banal.

It’s got the feel of a bootleg--the recording is at times horribly thin, and the occasional snatches of audience chatter make it sound like the work of someone staggering drunkenly through the crowd with a barely concealed mic.

What the Temper Trap do devastatingly well is drape post-office-party mistake-hookup tackiness in the lofty imagery of global struggle....Elsewhere, the Temper Trap's pairing of sweeping portentousness with mundane douchebaggery is trickier to overlook.

It was a mistake for VHS or Beta to subjugate their dance beat into a perfunctory structure for the guitars to smash against; the riffs sound like they're there for their own sake, biding their time and waiting for a moment of catchiness that never really arrives.

What For Stars lack in originality they overcompensate for in emotionality.

Bono may have self-deprecatingly described Songs of Innocence as “the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys...in your junk mail,” but it’s not even that interesting--it’s just a blank message.

Youngish American is a hapless vanity album, sad for all the wrong reasons, and all the more frustrating because it couches wokeness in songs about the extra advantages afforded to Tomson’s demographic.

It would be too easy to dog Hombre Lobo as a case where going back to the well leads to diminishing returns, but the problem is just that Hombre Lobo is too easy.

There will be an audience for bands like Jukebox the Ghost, who at least do this unoffensive brand of power-pap serviceably. But if you're too much of a realist to believe in trick lighting, happy endings or choreographed emotion, Safe Travels will probably leave you wishing for riskier terrain.

A cautionary tale of what happens when a "hit record" forgets to actually include hits.

At its best, its songs are serviceable bangers to nod off in the club to; at its worst, it’s a collection of strange admissions that, thanks to Nav’s affinity for taking himself too seriously, come off cringe-worthy.

They're not trying to pull off anything like that any more; instead, they're polishing up the durable façade of their signature sound, while the songwriting that it used to support has crumbled.

Slim still loves blabbing repetition and dropping yapping vocal samples into the gobs of the dull, and this helps make Palookaville less a reformation than merely his latest and quite bland big beat manifesto.

He’s never sounded more checked out. Even Cudi doesn’t seem to believe his own hype anymore. To its credit, INSANO is trying to do something different—that different thing, however, is just having DJ Drama provide thin narrative window dressing to a spate of uninspired Kid Cudi songs.

All Velvet Changes creates is a disquieting malaise that deflects any attempt to penetrate its billowy, monochromatic, meaningless contours.

It settles for the safe and familiar. Throw it back.

Virtually the whole record settles into the same formula the band's been dutifully churning out since the dawn of the millennium.

For a six-track EP, She Is Coming is remarkably repetitive, but it does manage a few OK spots.

The good news is that they're too skilled, experienced, and important to make a record that's just a mess, and for a while there's nothing so terrible about this one.

That the Watson Twins blend seamlessly into these backdrops, however, is far from a compliment. Of course it's lovely to an extent when the girls harmonize, but neither owns a voice strong enough to convey much besides a languid aridity.

Vroom Vroom is pointedly uncommercial and abrasive.