As silly as the songs on an A.merican D.ream are, it is Gerner’s wincingly theatrical vocals that really take the album into the realm of unintentional comedy.

Problem is, for the second straight album, they do so with the same exact set of tools as every other band in this sphere. So critiquing Ritual threatens to be a process of listing obvious influences that's just as dull as actually listening to the thing.

The weirdly distant and safe Magna Carta Holy Grail abides by the tried and true business principle that the customer is always right: you just have to remember who the customer is here.

The lyrics really don’t offer themselves up for much analysis, and they’re also sung in a way that lets you know your attention is best directed elsewhere.

Ghost rarely does get the hint, often left too slight and too self-important for it's own good.

While Tha Carter IV isn't the first indication that Wayne's finest verses are behind him, it is the most glaring.

In the context of Matt & Kim's discography, Lightning is inconsequential. Like an echo of an echo, there's nothing here that Matt & Kim haven't already done over and over again.

The new musicians forgo the gauzy, playful dilettantism of Euphemystic in favor of expansive pop marathons.

Wish Hotel might be ephemeral but it's ultimately pleasing, a cloud of scented smoke floating from your speakers to score an overcast day.

While it's not torture to listen to Dirty Dancing repeatedly, it does contain more than its rightful share of slip-ups and missteps.

The mix here is guitars to 11, everything else to 6, as the slurring, inebriated Liam is buried under mountains of riffs for better and worse.... Familiar to Millions reheats leftovers of better songs written six years ago and force-feeds them as reminders that Oasis could once write an uplifting song. As for those looking for a compact, two-disc set of Oasis' best, it's called What's the Story Morning Glory? and Definitely Maybe-- available for the low price of $8 at your local used record shop.

Fans of Client will appreciate the more dynamic edge to City... but those without a history with the band may write it off as another limp post-electroclash exercise.

Even when A Head Full of Dreams hints at experimentation, it inevitably drifts back onto predictable paths.

Beating Back the Claws of the Cold only offers fleeting glimpses of potential greatness beneath the ho-hum surface.

You get the feeling that Small Black do want to break free of their past, but they’re not always convincing at showing how badly they want it.

Where their earlier records thrived on the tension between Stollsteimer's gut-spilling confessions and the band's raucous, raw-powered attack, on Love, Hate and Then There's You, we get all the pleading, but without the violent, cathartic release.

Vile has mostly left his interest in extreme tape manipulation and soggy lo-fi charm behind him, but the Jamaica Plain EP offers a brief and fitfully pretty glance backwards.

With their harmonies and swooning vocals, they're never quite Troggs-level elemental, but these guys clearly know how to wail.

A few songs are some of Morrissey’s most engaging, exciting work of the 21st century. Other songs get your attention for the wrong reasons. ... His political musings all arrive with a crushing lack of subtlety or nuance.

Despite their best efforts, nothing on Deathsentences of the Polished and Structurally Weak is even half as interesting or poignant as the CD casing itself, and musically, the decision to focus on this album's mood and textures largely falls flat.

TRON: Legacy Reconfigured succeeds as much as most remix projects do, which is to say about 50% of the time, and without Daft Punk's name attached to the project it's doubtful it would have attracted much attention.

Now that the veil has been lifted, there’s not much on Tides End worth the price of progress.

Unfortunately, more than mediocre tracks or throaty sexual goofs, what does in Majenta is its scattershot nature. There's no flow to the way the album's sequenced, to the point where it seems purely arbitrary. Furthermore, Edgar seems so concerned about skipping between genres that he neglects to refine any one specific sound; even the strongest cuts rarely rise above "nice try."

There’s plenty Sia could do with an album entirely of Christmas originals, but too many are underwritten; there’s more consistency in the art direction than the songwriting.

Reasonable Woman, the singer’s 10th studio album, continues the trend of inconsistency. Over manicured synth arrangements and beat drops blown up to eye-watering proportions, Sia belts out self-help anthems that stick to formulaic, dated sounds. It’s outsized feel-good music with little worth feeling good about.

Call it mood music for the mindless.

The formula’s limitations are evident on Father of Asahd: There are plenty of voices but no clear message or intention.

Bigger Love is rife with this feel-good energy, buoyed by his stately voice and easygoing charm, but beneath its positive exterior is an emptiness that’s hard to ignore.