Unfortunately, Richards doesn't play to her strengths often enough. Too much of Light of X slips out of straightforward and into simple.

It's unfair to saddle Dead Confederate with the burden of the entire Athens tradition, or look for it to be anything other than a band making a record. But Sugar would have been much more interesting if these guys had focused on that instead of trying to be five or six bands at once.

While the definable hooks are definitely more present than on most metal records, that doesn't necessarily make a better, or even more accessible album.

When the members of Mastodon decided to make an audiophile's wet dream of a metal album, they abandoned the vein-bulging spontaneity of their former selves.

So while it sounds pleasant throughout, and sometimes awfully beautiful, it won't stick with you as long as it could after the album's final notes fade.

[The songs] demand reconstruction that can only come from multiple listens. Unfortunately, the initial impact of the record is so muted that only an artist as challenging and road-tested as Beck warrants such effort.

Sia's voice can be affected, and when the songwriting sags and the production becomes more generic toward the middle of the album, she struggles to keep the listener's attention.

There isn't a bad song on the record, but neither is there a particularly good one.

The main problem here is the theme -- the weight would have been a gift had there been some.

Much of the album feels unfocused, as if Cale has become seduced by the smooth trickery of digital production at the expense of cogent songs built on icy melodies, slippery poetics and true invention -- three of Cale's enduring strengths sadly missing through much of the album's fifty-three minutes.

Unexceptional and devoid of charm, The Tourniquet is, on the whole, disposable.

[His] vocals don't have the same strength or range they did just two years ago on You Are the Quarry.

This is almost selfishly indulgent, and unless you haven't heard the previously released "Dr. Marten's Blues," you have very little to learn from the rest of the album.

Howling Bells fall into the same trap that kills most sorta-weird rock bands when they try to write a more popular sophomore album: Everything sounds bigger, but everything is easily more forgettable.

Less than half of the eighteen tracks are worthwhile additions to Sean Paul's catalogue.

Such Fun is the type of record Annuals were always going to make: a slick opus, epic both in sound and messiness, that just never comes together.

Though it’s soothing at times, A Few Steps More doesn’t really boast any kind of bumps, and it’s difficult to discern one track from the next.

No Mercy is a valley, not a peak, in a career that has seen plenty of both.

Until he learns to translate the raw, confessional edge of his music to his work in the genre, the results will always be as unsatisfying as III/IV.

An album that lacks the band’s trademark ebb and flow, Strange Geometry is just plain inferior to the Clientele’s previous work.

Even if Anti-Flag’s hearts are in the right place, Bright Lights of America is too vague to be impactful.

The fun is gone. On The Invisible Deck, the Rogers Sisters sound like just another band.

Things jump back and forth from there, and never seem to build to very much. Shadow may want to cross back.

But even at its toe-tapping best, this quintet from Newcastle can’t convey a sense of passion.

Most of Asleep at Heaven’s Gate is forgettable, uninspired, middle-of-the-road indie pop.

Unfriendly and alienating.

Cults is mostly just an album of girl-group signifier piled on top of girl group-signifier.

Ultimately Dalek's fragmented drone makes [rapper] dalek's tired wordplay obsolete, thereby redeeming Abandoned Languages.