For all the improved minutiae, French Kicks simply can't shed the "boring" tag.

Keeler succeeds in meticulously reconstructing the electronic music he clearly has a taste for, but without stirring in any of his own personality the songs do little more than run in place, joylessly hitting the marks without changing the rules in any meaningful or attention-grabbing way.

What matters most is, with Monochrome, Helmet is back to doing what they do best.

When they stop arching their eyebrows and put some work into doing time-tested pop stuff, they can be great.

This is the band's most autopiloted effort yet, a hacked-up last-gen rehash of said space jams, only now with greater emphasis on glitz and glam. Somehow Muse, always loveably lame, have managed to take a turn for the lamer.

There's no unifying principal here-- just songs that are kinda psychedelic, kinda groove-oriented, and kinda long. While not exactly a disappointment, Happy New Year is a whole lot of "kinda," a record built around hesitancy that clutches the payoff tight in its arms.

Impeach My Bush is without a doubt her most competent record yet... But it also seems not to trust itself, always returning to the obvious tricks, making things right rather than keeping them as disorientingly rough-edged as her debut.

It's hard not to compare the two albums and find this one wanting; even the best songs, which are quite good, wouldn't bump anything off of Illinois.

Where The Eraser sags is in the middle, with tracks 3-5 falling particularly flat. Like too many of Radiohead's new songs, they contain a single weak idea dragged on interminably.

An album of tepid and stylistically muddled techno.

The dull patches are particularly depressing when you realize how much work went into them for so little payoff.

Through the Windowpane is at times a last-dance hallelujah, at other times an open wound, but it's never meager, and hardly ever mundane.

It's a satisfying and often moving final chapter to Cash's life and career, one that rejects self-pity and remorse in favor of hopefulness and even celebration.

It's a huge headfirst leap into the unknown for Kidwell, and more often than not, he sounds pretty lost. But it's an encouraging kind of lost, and the scenery is often breathtaking when it's not so jarring.

Much of it seems strangely blank, neither great nor at all sub-par.

The Return is supposedly a Kool Keith album, but four of the 14 tracks are skits, two mangle his vocals so the producers can show off their DJing, and one is a Princess Superstar song with Keith on the hook.

Plan B manages to milk his biographical plight without resorting to the childhood-trauma-as-pissing-contest tactics of most memoirists.

There is a very good album here-- you just have to work for it.

The strangest thing about Loose isn't its irregularity, but the simple fact that this doesn't sound like Nelly Furtado at all.

Iron Sea is filled with the sort of greeting-card poetry that would even give Bono pause.

As a solo record, it's no declaration of independence, but by sticking to what he does best, Staples makes it ring with sadness and sophistication.

The word "Hypnotic"'s overused, but the band's spatial know-how and rigorously muted flourishes are more than deserving of the accolade. It's well-deep, blossoming ambiance.

The Divine Comedy's constants are a Wildean wit with an apposite sense of style, and they persist on extravagant ninth album Victory for the Comic Muse.

While less exuberant and love-me-or-else desperate than the debut, News and Tributes is energizing in its own right, full of asymmetrical hooks and surprise detours.

An uneven album that unfortunately contains several such missed opportunities.

As far as improvements go, The Warning isn't so much a triumph as it is a reach in the right direction.

None of these are musical or artistic epiphanies, but it's Lif's realization that his problems are commonplace that makes Mo' Mega more interesting than his other stuff.

A treacherous, crashing disaster.