He fumbles the obligatory Canibus dis, and the self-aggrandizing title track, deftly strewn with fuzz-bass by London junglist Adam F, is mishandled by a don who's now too staid to come correct. [Oct. 2000, p.180]

There are unique nods to the band's Latin-
American heritage -- an acoustic flourish here, a manic, Mars Volta–style polyrhythmic breakdown there -- but they're too 
few and far between.

Amedeo Pace's wailing, overemotive tenor invites the mess of Blonde Radiohead jokes the band will inevitably receive. [Apr 2007, p.86]

It's the sound of too-clever body-movers merely going through the motions.

Psychology textbooks are less linguistically challenged and just as littered with cases of emotional breakdowns. [June 2008, p.114]

While Young's compositions occasionally flirt with the nuanced melodicism of Jimmy Tamborello or Jona Bechtolt, he rarely lets even the slightest risky idea emerge.

It wants to achieve what other singles artists (Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber) do with hits-and-filler records that boast enough of the former to justify the existence of the latter. Instead, Miike Snow’s got the filler but only half-failed attempts at hits.

These guys once flailed like a future-prog version of Slipknot (whose Shawn Crahan served as executive producer on L.D. 50), but now their doomy riff-o-rama comes equipped with mellow-bellow butt-rock choruses.

Produced with a heavy hand by Timbaland, the third solo album from ex-Soundgarden and Audioslave singer Chris Cornell is strangely appealing in its elaborately empty efficiency.

Between the groovier tracks, the album rarely keeps its feet or focus for long, getting lost in mazes of mangy Stones riffs or acoustic roundabouts with little purpose or pulse.

Though these faux-naif hipsters genuinely worship the wizard of Ozzfest, they don't have the chops to do much about it. [Nov 2005, p.101]

With the drums intimately booming and the occasional zap of an analog synth snaking across the formalist woodenness, the blessed simplicity of the arrangements on No No No makes one cry out for a more adventurous artist to place in these settings.

Most of these songs have good parts--they’re just lost in long, boring stretches of the band faintly nodding off to their distant, better work.

The third album from New Jersey's Steel Train is a textbook example of how to use splashy arrangements and high-octane performances to enhance tepid material.

At his best, Miller follows ex-bandmate's Jack White's example....Other times, those traditions, however vividly evoked, come off feeling--well a little blanched. [Nov 2007, p.114]

The subdued exception 'Blue but Cool' aside, the pretentious poetry and overwrought riffing induce numbness, not transcendence.

It never quite captures the other-worldliness that it clearly seeks. [Nov 2006, p.96]

There is a sense on V that Live will stay around long enough to ride into the state-fair sunset. [Oct 2001, p.137]

[Their] big beats lack the sure-shot hooks of their 1997 debut. [Feb 2004, p.104]

South's tunes tend to wobble in very slow circles, and Joel Cadbury has picked up soggy vocal habits from Coldplay's Chris Martin. [Mar 2002, p.127]

He falls into mawkishness far too often. [Jun 2007, p.93]

Constant club-pop hooks, courtesy of executive producer Dr. Luke (with help from mentor Max Martin plus Benny Blanco, Ammo, and others) render the hypocrisy nearly irrelevant; but if they dry up, yikes.

Flat... only a few songs flirt with her previous brilliance. [Apr 2005, p.102]

The songs drag in the middle, choruses become interchangeable, and too many tracks end with the same electronic stuttering. [May 2007, p.84]

Depending on your disposition, former Moldy Peach Kimya Dawson is either endearingly naïve or impossibly irritating. Parents who fall into the former camp could do worse than this children's album (it beats Kidz Bop!), but caveat emptor when uptight grandparents are around.

Her fresh attitude eventually gets lost in a slew of downtrodden ballads that sink the album's second half. In other words, business as usual.

While most of the music on Whip It On is somewhere in the vicinity of cool, the vocals sound like two people trying out for a Jesus and Mary Chain tribute band. [Jan 2003, p.101]

This is Ross at his least cohesive and most clueless since his 2006 debut, Port of Miami.

Like Seinfeld, as New York a document as Paul's Boutique, Quack presents itself as a comedy about nothing. But Seinfeld's nihilism, as a portrait of the neuroses of a certain class in a certain era, at least represented a kind of ethos (pace Walter Sobchak). Duck Sauce's "brain farts," on the other hand, take refuge in the idea that if you stand for nothing, you can't be held accountable for anything.

Drunk on ringing guitars, crashing drums, and swooning harmonies, singer Ross Flournoy and crew try to compensate for their shortage of fresh ideas with boundless enthusiasm -- and almost pull it off.

Get Awkward's forced rhymes and attitude sound almost calculated. [Apr 2008, p.92]

You know you're in trouble when Avril Lavigne starts sharing song titles with R.E.M. and Pink Floyd.

Last Light still follows a logical, workmanlike path, but detours into arch, twitchy guitar and languid, countrified ballads that show a poised sincerity. [Oct 2007, p.108]

Lorde’s least vital project by several leagues. There’s just very little magic here. The album lilts and meanders across 12 tracks, wholly avoiding the incendiary electronic percussion of past releases. ... Fewer drum machines would be fine if the tunes were particularly engaging, but the album’s general sense of self-satisfaction all but screams no pressure, friends, check this out when you get around to it. The lax style is no accident, of course. Lorde is a deft songwriter.

The record is 13 tracks long, sounds nice sometimes, and features Ty$, Juicy J, Project Pat, Curren$y, Chevy Woods, and Nicki Minaj, so it doesn't overstay its welcome and has decent taste in guests.

Singer/songwriter Shawn Christensen's yelping Oingo-Boingo-ish voice gets grating fast. [Nov 2003, p.117]

MGK is a talented rapper, but here, on his major label album, he sounds hollow.

Much of A.K.A. is still mawkish, midtempo melodrama that does too much to accentuate J. Lo's tunelessness.

Yes, the RZA is a legendary eccentric, but Digi Snacks is too impossibly weird.

aybe listeners trapped in the depths of mourning or an exceedingly bad breakup might find hypnotic comfort here; others will likely admire the pretty vocals, fingerpicked guitar, and spectral atmosphere--then crave songs just a little more eventful.

This full-length debut confirms Taylor's love for Arthur Russell's underwater electronic grooves, but these fussy, avant-prog slow jams rarely come up for air.

Like most comedy albums, this one loses its luster upon repeated hearings.

Sometimes Volume Two drifts in a Valium haze of deep sighs, or its lyrics wanly drain the fun out of romance.

For all its obvious wit and fizzy energy, Tones of Town ultimately feels self-congratulatory and a bit cold-hearted. [Feb 2007, p.83]

Scattered. [Jul 2007, p.95]

The Miami-born, Paris-based socialite subsequently wastes most of her somewhat-dated debut album boasting about MySpace friends and fiddling with torturous, Ed Banger-produced synth pop.

At his best - "The Veldt," "Closer," and "Channel 42," which has a nice, Cameo-like wah-funk wiggle - Deadmau5 is a topflight roots-of-EDM mimic. At his worst, he's a troll.

Despite refreshingly brief songs, frontman Fran Healy can't resist self-conscious vocal flourishes that insist he's imparting great truths (shades of Bono), and the bombastic arrangements encourage Andy Dunlop to uncork cheesy, stadium-seeking guitar riffs.

Too much of the time, Evanescence get lost in the cavernous spaces carved out by their unsecret weapon.

In those rare moments when they're truely wired, Texas' odd couple bring quirky soul to the music of machines. {mar 2008, p.102]

Supermodel's failing is that it's copying one of the foundational records of this trend, which is, you guessed it, Torches. It's hard to think outside a box you built yourself.

This time around, ATR's protest platitudes ("Are you ready to testify?") and electronic skronk-thud ("Digital 
Decay," with female member Nic Endo holding forth on Internet freedom), sound awkwardly dated.

But two decades deep in the game, Busta is still beholden to a style that ping-pongs between silly and steroidal, making his stabs at honesty fall awkwardly flat.

This London group's second studio album is pleasant but rather uneventful. [Sep 2007, p.129]

This LP sounds too close to unfocused jamming. [Apr 2007, p.95]

Port of Miami 2 further cements Ross as a mainstay among the aging elite—those rappers whose names now carry them further than their music does. Playing it safe with the sequel to his far more ambitious debut LP, Ross regurgitates that which people have come to love from him, or at least have accepted as his standard.

Occasionally, Lee's wit triumphs over his predictability. [Oct 2007, p.106]

The deadpan humor that animated the band's early werk is missing. [Nov 2003, p.117]

M83 needs to step out of the '80s, and back into the future. [Apr 2008, p.100]

Longer on nuance than hook. [Mar 2007, p.98]

Sadly, Mayer's idea of a good time involves hiring jazz musicians to make himself sound like '80s James Taylor. [Dec 2003, p.128]

All Night Long posits Buckcherry as your ultimate all-night rager soundtrack; the fist-pumping anthem-makers who are best heard on 5 a.m. IHOP runs.

There’s not even anything very embarrassing about Black Laden Crown, the first Danzig album since 2010’s Deth Red Sabaoth--it’s just plain old boring.

Straining to prove something to the haters, the Ring flee from their strengths, trading enthusiastic bash-and-pop for slow songs as soggy as deep cuts from a Train album. [May 2002, p.115]

Dead Petz is a short-lived album by design.

Only the electric "It Begins Tonight," righteous of riff and bonkers of solo, plays to his strengths; the rest is like watching Michael Jordan bat .235 in Birmingham.

He’s turned in 12 tracks of heavily orchestrated and unbearably sincere acoustic pop, territory that he hasn’t touched since the late ’90s.

Em is largely in defense mode; it’s a self-consciousness that leans closer to stagnation than catharsis.

The arrangements are so ponderous, the vowel-masticating vocal languor so excessive, you almost wish he'd go whole hog and cover "Ave Maria." [Nov 2003, p.117]

His avant-electro minimalism can get pretty vacant--to the point where you may not be able to tell it's on. [Jan 2004, p.100]

Jammed with cheesy effects, weak orchestration, and paper-thin vocals, this is a mix that nobody would dream of Californicating to. [Apr 2004, p.94]

His mildewy folk rock is dourly impenetrable. [Apr 2005, p.108]

After one truly cool tune, their feeble musicianship becomes a problem. [Oct 2003, p.113]

Evidence and Iriscience remain so humorlessly hard they could guard Buckingham Palace. [May 2004, p.108]

Where 2001's Discovery coyly gene-spliced cock rock and New York garage, Human merely cuts and pastes. [Apr 2005, p.105]

Songs like the predictably ribald "Porno Bitches" are little more than by-the-numbers, behind-the-music tracks. [Jul 2005, p.104]

This album would be better without Scott screaming about absolute nonsense. [Sep 2004, p.119]

They sound like they can't be bothered. [Oct 2004, p.120]

Big-name cameos... can't disguise the fact that this is one more rote chapter in the infamous Queensbridge duo's twilight. [Oct 2004, p.120]

Flavorless chamber pop. [Jan 2006, p.91]

The Peas give fun a bad name. [Jul 2005, p.104]

It's too tepid to be offensive. [Feb 2006, p.87]

[Simple Plan is] a band as spiritually distant from Dookie as John Mayaer is from Blind Willie McTell. [Dec 2004, p.124]

This is a troubling record. There are some stellar moments, but it's mostly just troubling. [Jul 2004, p.105]

Morbid.... The beats are never as heavy as the subject matter. [May 2004, p.108]

His third solo album is promoted as "new classical," but "J. City" sounds more like a grievous stab at alt-rock.

There are interesting moments... but too often they're smothered in a formless buzz of guitar, samples, voilin, harmonica--you name it. [Jul 2006, p.87]

Bangerz is a precise album that flits between bombastic and turgid; it is not very fun.

Cryptacize's latest squanders the band's natural resource: singer Nedelle Torrisi.

Percolating tracks such as 'Pum Pum' and 'Chooga Cane' are more like undercooked, meandering jams than songs, mixing loose grooves and breezy synths as the profane Perry portrays a muttering old codger.

Part of what made the Strokes so exciting was the flair they brought to the old trick of sounding hot while looking cool. On his solo debut, bassist Nikolai Fraiture never manages either.

It's unfortunate, then, that most of Vol.1 winds up sounding like rejected Aerosmith ballads. Which is to say, epic, overproduced anthems made to accompany Ben Affleck anthropomorphizing animal crackers on Liv Tyler's stomach.

Nice, sure, but whatever happened to naughty. [Jun 2006, p.82]

A mediocre album without the ambition to flirt with the terrible, Beauty Marks manages to land in the middle of Ciara’s discography when boldness is required.

The muffled, placid Daybreak lacks the burn of the first two parts and never illuminates.

Consciously or not, U2-style evangelism is all over the Mumfords' bland but biblically titled second album, Babel.

The rest of the album buries otherwise thrilling moments. [Oct 2007, p.108]

The feel-good vibe... mak[es] you feel crappy for not being as upbeat as India. [Aug 2006, p.80]