The lyrics are especially vapid here in the Stadium Arcadium.

Anything that was either subtle or complicated has been erased to provide ready-made heart-on-sleeve love songs.

The songs on Without Feathers are fine, really, and for the most part pretty well-crafted, but there just doesn't seem to be a good reason to listen to them.

Beirut's mournful horn riffs, driving piano, sprightly ukulele, dense percussion and occasional synth loops proved haunting and entrancing at best, flat-out morose at worst, and benignly pretty the rest of the time.

Serena-Maneesh sounds like the kind of record many bands spend their entire careers trying to create.

If you have the time to dedicate to these genre-bending excursions, the effort can be worth it more often than not.

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

Strikes with a magnificent urgency.

Unlike the Darkness or Eagles of Death Metal, these guys don't think this shit is funny, and instead of making them ripe for mockery, it makes Wolfmother that much more respectable.

Even with a few overdone songs, though, Shut Up I Am Dreaming is a solid effort.

Where Now Here Is Nowhere was equally about force and restraint but always in separate parts, Ten Silver Drops does well to blend the two.

With about half the tracks on this record falling short, Skinner would seem to be teetering on the edge of irrelevance. But even the failed tracks here sound interesting, and if he's lost his way somewhat thematically, it's all in the name of searching for his new voice.

Of all the group's works, Pick a Bigger Weapon has a greater sense of inclusion and belonging.

Nothing sounds empty, nothing sounds cluttered.

Songs and Other Things' mid-tempo pop feels tossed-off, like Verlaine couldn't have been bothered to do more between walking the dog and a few dart games.

It's hard to figure out what exactly the concept is behind this concept album.

Richard Butler is a personal and, at times, beautiful album, but sadly not enough to qualify it as a success.

Sometimes it's hard to take seriously a band that bases its identity on a shtick -- but it doesn't seem like the members of the Dresden Dolls are much interested in being taken seriously.

It showcases an artistic range that had been up to this point unexplored.

The guitar work is straight out of the Velvet Underground/Television songbook, and the production begs for comparisons to the Strokes or Interpol. That's not to say being compared to these folks is bad, it's just that those comparisons don't reveal how unimaginative The Black Magic Show really is.

The album's true stumbling block lies in the Friedbergers' inability to follow many of their ideas to any sort of logical conclusion.

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

If the members of Rye Coalition had at least done a masterful job of impersonating their muses, we could call Curses a tribute album. Sadly, they fail even in that.

[Producer Paul] Epworth's accomplishment is obvious throughout the record. Having remixed some of today's indie-elite, infusing garage rock riffs with electro elements, he knows the importance of dance-floor accessibility and brings out all the shadows and contrasts that make Kick the accomplishment it is.

The band's shortcomings only become apparent when looking at the album as a whole; its repetition of the same sunshine formula loses it flare right around the third track, when the record's pace begins to slow.

Built to Spill has managed to elevate rock's pre-eminent instrument to a pedestal while creating something that's both approachable and timeless.

Despite the occasional moment when Garden Ruin sounds like a garden-variety alt-country-rock album, its moments of pure Calexico charm outweigh its missteps.

Most of Death by Sexy plays like the hard-rock equivalent to Ying Yang Twins or a stripped-down version of anything in Motley Crue's catalog.