The album is full of big rock guitars anchored to big rock effects, but it somehow never manages either to sound big enough or to rock hard enough.

Time of the Assassins could have used a few more trips to the Rolodex to bring in a ringer of a singer or two, since Fraiture doesn't seem up to the task, or necessarily even into it.

There are plenty of impulses worthy of exploration, but too often they end up tarnished by a listless desire to meander without direction, making Wilson Semiconductors feel more like a stopgap than a valuable addition to Hagerty's canon.

Instead of offering playful, engaging pop music, we get new wave retreads and a couple of rock journeymen and the whole thing comes off like an overgrown episode of MTV's "Making the Band".

Like many spinoffs from the Odd Future machine, it's a small piece of a larger puzzle, useful for obsessives concerned with keeping their catalogs up to date.

Discodeine settles too comfortably into a consistent four-on-the-floor groove that ends up sounding an awful lot like a rut.

Amber Headlights is a step backwards after the lush beats and subdued songs of the Twilight Singers' debut, 2000's Twilight, but it also seems weak following the harrowing Blackberry Belle and even the so-so covers album She Loves You.

Elefant's latest is only as deep as its clenched-jaw fake-Brit hooks.

The ten tracks here are all honest executions of a sound that was essentially perfected ten years ago; nostalgia alone can’t justify how little legitimately new material MSTRKRFT bring to the table.

The album flows well, effortlessly segueing from Achtung Baby-like rock to mechanical new wave like Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys. O’Riordan and Koretsky sing simple lyrics, often repeating the same phrase over and over, allowing alternate meanings to sink in.

Brain Holiday sounds like that kind of safe space, but it’s also a testament to what can be accomplished when you’re a little distracted.

There are a couple of moments when these banalities briefly turn transcendent. ... There are too few of those bright spots, though.

If Rise of an Empire is meant to read like some kind of State of the Union address, it paints Young Money as a fractured team that’s lost its compass.

Tickets to My Downfall was memorable for the way it treated pop-punk like a natural palette for his emotions, but this too often feels like a concept album about rock, a stodgy record that’s too busy using “real instruments” to do anything interesting with them.

As Die Antwoord's energy level putters out, so too does Mount Ninji, an album too faded and immature to make a lasting dent on the face of hip-hop.

Too much of Man of the Woods is musically and thematically shallow; at 66 minutes, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep.

Head Above Water marks a new chapter in the singer’s lengthy body of work; it’s a shame that Lavigne thinks her high notes are all she has to give.

Bully’s real curveball is the lack of Ye, even after he re-recorded it with human vocals. He’s on every track but also somehow none of them, making a case for redemption and not sounding very convinced by it himself.

This could be the group's most accomplished record musically, but when Anthony Roman opens his yap he consigns the band's good deeds to the remainder bin.

As a whole, the harder Wolfpack Party tries to be a fun party record, the more forced it feels. And as solid as L's beats are, they can't stand up on their own.

Despite his chart success with Drake, many of 2 Chainz' pop maneuvers feel tone-deaf.

The good news is that "The Love Within," Bloc Party’s comeback track, an indie disco-pop hybrid that is somehow both garish and bland, is comfortably the worst song on Hymns. A little better is "So Real," which trails a Silent Alarm throwback riff over low-key soul and hangover-soothing deep house; on "The Good News," a similarly midtempo Blur pastiche, a down-and-out narrator trudges from "the Gospels of St. John" to the "bottom of a shot glass."

Was it really his idea to add the distorted microphones and insectoid buzzing into the overstuffed “Alien Nation” or the lopsided drum panning on “Stuck in my Head”? Aside from those curiously tacky outliers, Lanois’ tasteful ambience dampens the band’s everlasting, pulsating indie rock

Hologram Jams (that title remind you of Oracular Spectacular or Robotique Majestique?) is a vastly inferior record to Sea, replacing the dynamic punk psychedelia of their debut with sugary overstimulation and rank nostalgia.

More streamlined than their older music, Mine Is Yours' relative simplicity allows its songs to more transparently deal with love lost and found.

Ultimately, the songs XXXTentacion has left behind are insubstantial and narrow, and Bad Vibes Forever only weakens the case that his view of himself was ever a worthwhile lens with which to process his art.

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

The music is more unmemorable than bad, though occasionally Gonzalez's inexperience, which seems to limit what Trapanese can do as well, shows.