Worlds Apart is the first TOD album that sounds like it was influenced by a marketing department.

Sadly, the album's consistency is also its failing; you can only take so much softness... before you're just listening to elevator music, and after 19 tracks that's what this becomes.

Victory For The Comic Muse seems destined to be one of those odd works beloved by cultish fans of Hannon’s work, but an unfocused misfire from the casual listener’s standpoint.

Another almost-but-not-quite entry in a catalog full of near-miss gems.

Omnibus is more a historical artifact for the Decemberists completist than a riveting overview of a criminally neglected band from the late ’90s.

More a novelty than an essential addition to the Dismemberment Plan legacy.

The pair overextend themselves often enough to appear to be posturing, costing them some of their charm.

It's hard not to like music this well-ordered and composed, but in the end it sounds as if The Album Leaf has taken a break on innovation and is settling for being derivative -- of itself.

As solid a listen as it may be, one can't help but yearn for a little bit more of the testosterone-charged hard-rock muscle that the band members' resumes evoke.

Eyes Open shows you the elements of a successful record, without the heart that ultimately makes it a success.

Sting's most adventurous disc as a solo artist.

Rock N Roll contains 14 Adams originals, it’s essentially a stylistic covers record, and a damn fine one at that.

If you don't know, or can look beyond, the staggering U-turn it represents, then Per Second is an amiable time investment for a top-down cruising summer afternoon. If you're hungry for weightier fare, however, you'd be best served by digging deeper into the band's catalog.

Winchester Cathedral may be a transition album, or it may just contain a few curveballs to keep discerning listeners on their toes -- only Clinic knows for certain.

Idlewild may still be figuring out exactly how to juggle its conflicting elements, but there are more than enough truly bright spots on Warnings/Promises to remind the listener of what the band is capable of when it fires on all cylinders -- and even when it doesn't.

An album that feels a bit self-conscious in its adult-contemporary skin.

Over-produced and (regrettably) heavily dependent on synth-powered '80s grooves.

Unmemorable and inoffensive, Death Cab has gone from oddball indie-pop kids to mature professionals who now have a lot more people counting on their success.

The Search is protest music for the cryptology set.

Mostly, it sounds like no more and a little less than one might expect (or hope for) from such a union: Scott Weiland singing over some relatively crunchy Slash guitar templates.

The guitars stumble in a monotone of mid-level, processed rattle; the drums don't propel as much as struggle to disguise an all-too-turgid pace; and the rage is both unfocused and leavened with too much narcissistic navel-gazing.

Razorlight is more than The Strokes, London Bureau -- all nervous guitar lines and neither-here-nor-there bar-hopping energy -- but what's left of the mucho-hyped UK outfit's identity feels second-hand borrowed, as well.

Fans of the Scottish foursome will be disappointed with 12 Memories, which plays like a wimpy, distant cousin to Good Feeling.

Out West’s main drawback is pacing; despite being drawn from a trio of sold-out shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco earlier this year, there’s little sense of momentum.

Ultimately, they don't come across as unbearably pretentious so much as just really, really misguided.

Though it might not be the most easily digestible subject matter, it melds thought and execution as well as any concept album in recent memory.

It's not simply the weakest album of his otherwise impressive career; it's one of the poorest performances from such a high-profile talent in recent memory.

Young's nomadic narrative requires its own Cliffs Notes, and the lack of cohesion or focus (which Young pretty much cops to in the liner notes) give the record less heft than the irate rambling of your neighborhood curmudgeon.