Somehow, Dando's nonchalance here--his stoned cadences, fleeting hooks, loose-limbed guitar playing, and generally rumpled demeanor--comes across as a weird but sincere gregariousness.

The problem with Kane’s emulation of past performers is that he remains a tourist lost in his time warp, lacking the originality and vocal grit to elevate fandom into innovation.

Raditude doesn't have that stench of minimal calculation on it; if anything, it's as earnest as the famously confessional Pinkerton, just written by someone whose age doesn't match his POV.

There's a weird outdated feel to the album; too many of the songs feel like attempts to cross over to a rap mainstream that barely exists anymore.

On Ten$ions, they replace what made them sometimes intriguing and slightly subversive with tired tropes and lazy lyrics.

Like a washed-up athlete, Lee's stuck reliving his glory years.

Lupe often has enough trouble staying out of his own way, yet Lasers doesn't suffer for that reason; it just feels like the flaming wreckage of a project that never had a prayer.

Whilst there's no getting past some of the duller and more unbearable material on this record ... if she'd made a record full of songs as unaffected as these four ["Lies," "Starring Role," "Power & Control," "Living Dead"], Electra Heart could be one of the year's most acclaimed pop albums.

le there are bits of great humor and wordplay scattered throughout (occasionally spat out in dizzying double time), the fogged-over choruses, tough-guy posturing ("In Gotti We Trust"), and spurts of disquieting misogyny ("Scrape") feel like too much padding.

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.

The old cliché about double albums is that most could be greatly improved if edited down to one disc, but that doesn’t hold true here. Animals is an anomaly: a two-disc set without enough solid material for even a single LP.

While the songs on Peace Trail are unquestionably timely and occasionally poignant, Young’s songwriting-as-immediate-response sometimes fails him.

It may actually be best to just pretend that H.N.I.C. 3 ends after the 10th song, because up to that point it's a pretty good, if slightly uninspiring, mixtape.

Montage of Heck is like a shaggier version of Family Tree, a voyeuristic document that attempts to plop you down in the living room of a dead hero, and it leaves you with a similar hollow feeling.

The transcontinental breadth of the band's influences keeps Chief from coming across as pallid piggybackers of any one scene, but for a group that hasn't yet demonstrated an ability to nail down a particular sound, keeping so many balls in the air could be stretching its talents too thin.

For an album called The Time Is Now, David spends too much of his time looking like he's trying to catch up.

Snow Blindness isn't essential listening for anyone but VanGaalen's most dedicated fans, but it is an enjoyable, occasionally even great record.

Travistan fails so bizarrely that it's hard to guess what Morrison wanted to accomplish in the first place.

It delves as far as it can without hitting government-name territory, and for that the true fans will embrace it. But how many times can you retell the same story?

Even as a record of adequate, vaguely politicized mook-rock, it mostly falls flat, whether by lazy lyrics or some uninspired drumming from Galactic's Stanton Moore, who adds plenty of percussive touches like the judicious cowbell of 'Clap For the Killers' but sinks more straightforward tracks such as 'The Oath' like a stone.

In parts, Albion's shambolism is stunning, but that's no excuse for moments of total sloppiness.

A good listen to the album today reveals some ways it was ahead of its time.

O.N.I.F.C., his second major label album, is a resounding misstep, and it's the first sign that Khalifa's unwavering focus may be getting swallowed up by the haze.

Sacred Hearts Club splits the difference between the bookending acts on that Grammys tribute: Maroon 5 and the Beach Boys.

Throw Haerts on shuffle and it’s uniformly accessible and uniform, period.

Somewhere on the way to novelty-fame, Three 6 Mafia lost something, and these days they sound like they're just going through the motions.

Its chief problem is that every word, every note, and every instrument sounds dry, sapped of most of their personality.

The lyrics' yearning for something tangible and substantial ultimately feels at odds with what Sweet Sister, promising surface and all, actually brings to the table.