Brown is riding on the coattails of artists greater than he is, but he is clearly a talented performer who can deliver high-octane club hits.

An album that while fun, often stagnates no matter how much the trio push things into the red.

Be Still Please occasionally falls victim to over-orchestration. But McCaughan proves too much of an indie-rock veteran and pro to let that sink the entire album.

Passively waiting to be noticed, Holopaw’s second album, Quit +/or Fight, is like the kid who never raises his hand in class but whom everyone knows is the smartest in the room.

All the Why? hallmarks are there, but the album just lacks effusive energy or emotional rawness needed to bring it all to life.

Archive acts as this brief glimpse into the evolution of a celebrated songwriter and a band, yet with the quality and the high level of music geekery required, it's obvious that this one's intended for the superfans.

If Sea Drum/ House of Sun was the debut album from some little-known psych act, I’d be hailing it as one of the year’s best records.... But from the Boredoms, Seadrum/House of Sun is nothing special.

Unfortunately, Sigel has taken a step away from reconciling the truth on his fourth full-length, The Solution. Instead of shedding the one-note dimension of his popular Broad Street Bully persona, he simply cloaks himself in another unconvincing and uninteresting trope: the mack-lover.

The album is a tightrope walker, constantly straddling the line between sincerity and unapologetic rocking.

Diamond Hoo Ha is by no means a return to the band’s glory days, but it at least offers a simple reminder of their talent for writing energetic, hook-laden pop songs.

Black Mesa ventures deep into individuality but it's ultimately a fever dream that's more accessible to the man who created it rather than to an audience.

Kweli shows again that he deserves the respect he receives, but Eardrum is simply not cohesive enough.

Music that's built more around the image earnest and honesty than musicality can definitely be a powerful thing, but that's just the problem: It's either powerful or it's not. On Year in the Kindgom, J. Tillman is either a soothsaying troubdaour, or he's not.

Ghetto Bells finds Chesnutt running the gauntlet -- string-laden balladry, desert folk-rock, thumb-piano noodling.

There aren't any real missteps, but neither is How We Operate a step forward.

By merely keeping up, they don't do much to separate themselves from the flock of young bands crossing the Atlantic -- again and again.

In the future, the guys in Jurassic 5 need to do a better job picking their friends and their song subjects.

In their desire to avoid repetition, however, they’ve indeed strayed somewhere they’ve never been before: the middle of the road.

And though it's doubtful that any of these qualities will duplicate the success that Moby had in 1999, Last Night is a surprisingly solid and fun listen for anyone who ever gets nostalgic for MTV's Amp.

Sure, this is a relatively slight effort--those in search of adventure had best look elsewhere--but for the aural equivalent of a fluffy blanket, this is your crack rock.

The members of Viva Voce accomplish a catchy cohesiveness that's at its best when they allow their songs to stray.

The perfect antique Cadillac album.

From the band we never expected to evolve, there is enough sweeping ambition to have knocked us on our heels - if only the members had learned the art of discretion.

We, the Vehicles is ultimately too redundant to graduate Maritime into a more mature audience.

Even if Sov doesn't live up to the hype, there is enough quality material on Public Warning to warrant more music from the self-proclaimed "biggest midget in the game."

Keys to the World does have a few great moments, but it's not the definitive solo record he's been promising.

Campfire does little to surprise.

What's lacking this time around is the cohesiveness of the Konono No. 1 record.

you've heard them before. But it's not enough to sustain interest. The dead spaces in between just feel flatter in comparison, and those same hooks end up feeling disposable. It's a sharp, quick-burn of an attraction.

A solid first work.

Given that it's reassuring that he is writing and recording solo material again, it's disappointing that his fully finished renderings don't hold the same fascination as the sketches.

So Two Thousand is rich in guitar-disco atmosphere and tone. But it's weirdly lacking in personality.

What's really preventing Minus the Bear from making a breakthrough with El Oso is the band's unwillingness to head in new directions.

Discipline, is nowhere near the high point of her career, but it is better than its predecessor.

The record succeeds because of the instrumentals.

Ultimately, Beach House is a mood piece, finding a specific tone and lingering there for its entirety.

When Fish Ride Bicycles was probably never going to be as good as hearing "Black Mags" for the first time, but no one could have bet that it would be this boring.

In small doses, Animal Lover acts as the perfect antidote to a musical landscape often cluttered by acts too timid to truly challenge their audiences.

Mandell’s best, most varied album is hidden somewhere inside Artificial Fire. You have to dig through 20 minutes of brightly painted filler to find it, and unfortunately 12 of those minutes make up the album’s first three songs.

Sticks to the mold of its hook-y predecessor.

All in all, though, Total Life Forever is a slightly more assured record from Foals; this time out they sound like they've taken complete ownership of their music.

Here, Friedberger has once again proven his capabilities. At times they impress, but too often they confound, and it's beginning to seem as if he's too comfortable in his distance.

To be certain, the push and pull is lost through most of The State vs. Radric Davis, replaced by a straddling of the line between commercial and street rap.

Some of the tracks still don't feel like they offer enough.

The album's lows remain limp and strangely clinical, making its true promise all the more disappointing.

Perhaps Adams is just earning cheap sympathy with his strained, tour-weary voice, or maybe it’s just too thrilling to hear him revisit Gram, but Jacksonville City Lights does seem to come by its sound honestly.

Loose, sloppy playing and power hooks.

Plat du Jour is never dull, and if you went your whole life not knowing what it was about you could enjoy it on a basic scale. But as a project, the record is somewhat of a disappointment.

Despite a heavy reliance on acoustic guitar, the album never rests on one sound and feels fresh throughout. Unfortunately, the songs that shape all these solid sounds don't quite come together.

The band’s energy works alongside unusual arrangements and crisply recorded instruments.

Therein lies the personality crisis of Jackson Hill: The sole connecting thread for all these tunes is a band whose love for its craft just barely surpasses what a hodgepodge mess it often is.

Axes... has three distinct sections. The first is quite inspired, the second is mostly interminable, and the third is just inventive enough to rescue the whole venture.

Ultimately, however, The Minus 5 is the indie-rock equivalent of Ocean's Twelve. Everyone involved is clearly having a blast, and the result for the audience is often infectious. But just as often it is distancing, like watching footage of someone else's birthday party.

As a result, Thao & Mirah is a nice side-project for two great performers, but not as revelatory as it could have been for either of them.

The songs on the Dark End of the Street EP are well-sung and nicely arranged, but they are missing that vital thing that turns a song into a necessary document of feeling and experience.

The unhinged guitar liberation the group achieves on stage can’t be touched by the inspired but ultimately uninspiring sound of Return To Form.

On We Are the Night, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons pull out all their tricks, delivering an album of euphoric psychedelic electronica, quirky guest appearances, and danceable grooves.

The second half of Good Evening picks up and runs right off, with the hooks hiding under all the reverb and fuzz starting to scratch at the surface with a fair amount of urgency.

Nothing sounds empty, nothing sounds cluttered.

Fergie is talented enough to compete with the likes of Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera, but the material on The Dutchess won't take her to those heights.

Fuck Death, compelling as it is, never quite finds the same charged feeling of purpose [as Skin of Evil].

About seven tracks in, 119 settles into a series of mid-tempo jogs that fail to really go anywhere.

Noah and the Whale try their best to make weighty songs (look no further than the paint-by-numbers description of a funeral on the limp “Death by Numbers”), but they’re better as a pop group that digs ukuleles and acoustic guitars.

On what has been for the most part an impeccably executed commercial rap album, TI again reminds us what he’s really capable of.

Yeasayer's only triumph here is perfecting a niche they've already seemed to master.

Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of effort to sift through 30 such songs to find the more immediately arresting moments. The sugar-rush aesthetic grows tiresome over the course of the record and threatens to overshadow the more sublime moments.

Unfortunately, the bad tracks merely remind us that for all Cut Your Hands Off’s brazen energy, towering sound, and melodious verse-chorus one-two punch attack, it’s the subject of the songs that ultimately bores. Which is a shame, because most of the time, these guys get everything else so damn right.

At ten tracks, Bright Ideas doesn’t have a lot of fat, but it ultimately feels like it could have been more successful on the EP format McCaughan is so fond of.

The original Pussy Cats may not be classic enough to be untouchable, but Nilsson was enough of an oddball original, and the album carries so much back story, that a remake of it just ends up being a "why bother" moment.

A thoroughly enjoyable and well-crafted album of mid-tempo soul.

The album gains little from the effects heaped upon it, but Teenager is able to escape being totally buried under them.

So are The Hives stuck in a stylistic corner, or is The Black and White Album just a rocky bridge to something new and revelatory from the group? The material seems to drop hints in both directions.

Despite the jovial cover, this album comes off as almost entirely serious, which is all well and good until you hear some of the most misguided pontification ever laid down on a hip-hop track.

A case could be made that this is a newfound maturity, and without a doubt Rivers is no second-hand attempt. However, sans even a single convulsive whirlwind, Rivers is more musical wallpaper than a masterpiece.

Security Screenings is a solid record, one that will probably sound much better in the context of Prefuse 73's catalog twenty years from now than we'll ever give it credit for today.

Together, Reid and Hebden weave engaging tales without ever managing the transcendent spontaneity these kinds of collaborations sell themselves on.

Two forgettable bonus tracks tacked on to Sub Pop’s U.S. edition of Antidotes don’t help on that score. We don’t need any more of what’s already here.

The up-tempo songs don’t show much variation or excitement, but the real fire comes when the band slows it way down or steps out of the garage.

For Screening Purposes Only is rock without a filter.

The members of the crew surrounding Eminem still need to distinguish themselves individually, but in the tradition of G-Unit/Shady's best stuff, few songs on The Re-Up have to be skipped.

[There] are only the few standouts on an album otherwise comprised of facile dance tunes with overwritten lyrics.

On the one hand, no 3 can sound frustrating unfinished. It seems as though something substantially more satisfying would have been attained had the band just stuck with it for a while longer. On the other, it's an enjoyable enough distraction not without its merits. Just don't think of it as the proper progression from no 2.

Mux Mool has managed to produce another album as solid as it is thwarted by its limitations.

The reality is that many of these songs could easily be outtakes from "One Word," and by sharing many of the same sounds, Preparations ends up sharing a similar voice, which doesn’t excite as it once did.

After that highpoint ["Video Games"] things head downhill quickly.

Although the venue doesn’t spark an unqualified masterpiece for the grand dame of alt.country, a musky reverence seems to seep into the record, and the best moments here are among the best she’s committed to tape.

"Everything Is Under Control" is worth a download, and Saul Williams's spoken-word performance on "Mr. Nichols" is worth noting, but how much of this record has been done before and how much of it will be done again? What Coldcut mix can you say the same about?

What results instead is a solid offering full of familiar noisy-pop that with a little branching out might help the trio do something special next time around.

The most powerful moments here reimagine their sound at its best without ever retreading. The rest of it, however, glitters far too much for its own good.

Sixes & Sevens feels more like movie-hopping at an art-house multiplex, an exercise in genre formats and stolen identities.

Waiting for the Sunrise doesn’t signal the end of Vandervelde’s party, but one hopes he gets his second wind rather than becoming satisfied and heading off to bed.

Millan's first solo effort is solid, but it feels like more of an experiment than anything.

The songs could have been chosen more wisely, especially because some significant fan favorites are absent.

We know this routine well; it's comfortable and pleasing to the ears. But throw on a disc by one of the originators (Pavement) or the cream of the modern crop (Wolf Parade) and Tapes 'n Tapes is trumped hands-down.

Ultimately, Harris appears to have simply swapped one formula for another, and if there’s to be a Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2 he will need to discover at least a few new tricks. ... [But] there are encouraging signs here that the Harris of old hasn’t been entirely lost for good.

Despite the missteps, the band still emanates a certain cheekiness that's rare these days, especially for a lot of oh-so-serious psych outfits.

Ultimately the album is merely a reward for sitting through a season of reality-show high jinks.