Thanks in part to an overly generous 73-minute running time, the reteaming rarely feels vital. [July 2008, p.100]

Beyond the fact that her voice is deep enough for her to front Crash Test Dummies, there's nothing particularly compelling about Scarlett Johansson's singing.

As a memorable exploration of the intersection between hip-hop and the blues, it ain't much.

The pseudonym and title (a wink to Yo La's mostly-covers Fakebook) indicate how this lark, with oft-inaudible vocals, is meant to be held up against the band's canon.

Phish's first studio album since 2004 suggests that what brought these jam-scene kings back together after a five-year breakup wasn't unbridled passion, but faith in their well-oiled machine.

Save a few deft meditations on the stresses of blog-rap fame ("Flickin'," "L_O_V_E"), rapper Naledge and producer Double-O also sound uninspired, squandering their boyish Ivy League enthusiasm on clichéd odes to nightclub decadence.

Here We Stand is tantalizing, but that's all. [July 2008, p.102]

Unlike her major-label LPs, this is a stringently stripped-down, dark-side-of-the-mountain album that's near impossible to cozy up with. [Oct 2001, p.131]

Skirting the emotional depths that marked his past work, Callahan's new persona feels almost shallow. [May 2007, p.84]

Sonic strategist Eno is clearly in "oblique" mode here.

Brandi Carlile works too hard on By The Way I Forgive You, and though sometimes this results in songs haunted by mourning, it also leads to songs that collapse into bathos.

I-Empire still makes you wonder what constituency DeLonge hopes to attract with such an anti-fun platform. [Dec 2007, p.112]

Rated R, Rihanna's first album since her brutal confrontation with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, wants to recast her as a searing woman scorned. It doesn't quite take.

Crooked Shadows, their first album in nine years, folds the polished dynamics of contemporary pop into a hesitant, uneven collection of heartsongs that nonetheless ache and soar like vintage Dashboard.

Exciter is basically a vehicle for Martin Gore's increasingly formulaic songs... [June 2001, p.155]

On Chromatica, she seems too afraid or to removed from the Koons-loving side of herself to get too bizarre or to let the production dominate, two of Artpop’s best qualities. ... Chromatica functions as both stopgap escapism and yet another portrait of someone among us who’s trying to patch together her identity again.

Memories does indeed trigger some, particularly when a big-chorused rocker ("The Afterlife") opens up like a razor-blade suitcase. As for the ballads, you're better off YouTubing "Glycerine" -- or one of the tearjerkers ("Forever May You Run" ) from Rossdale's underappreciated 2008 solo disc.

[It] never rests in one spot. [Feb 2007, p.87]

The collision of rhetoric and intentions result in both colorless abstractions like piano ballad and first single "Where Are We Now," and grand melodrama like "You Feel So Lonely You Could Die."

So much of Wolf is about distancing Tyler from the listener, whereas the vulnerability and melodic mirroring of "Answer," awash in sad organ glissando and two decades of unmet emotional need, is the album's truly shocking moment, in large part because it's so much better than everything else. From there it's another eight problematic songs until a pulse returns during Earl Sweatshirt's guest verse on "Rusty."

We are offered 20 more, a handful of these tracks bordering on genius, a few offering genuine yuks, and the rest sounding so half-baked they could be an ice-cream flavor.

The music, particularly Lenny Kaye's guitars, can be both gritty and lush, but it mainly functions to uplift the words and hold them closer to the ears. The problem here is that Patti's got our attention but her couplets are too often second-rate.

There's a pervasive lack of hooks, not to mention an eerie sense of anonymity.

The earnest but tepid Clear Heart Full Eyes, which as a solo album makes an excellent argument for sticking with your apostles.

The production is as overwrought as the antiwar themes. [Apr 2007, p.88]

A primary-color blast of major-key melodies, airy boy-girl vocals, ringing guitars, skipping rhythms, brass, woodwinds, and rolling piano, the rather exhaustingly charming third album from this Canadian collective radiates with the earnest warmth of a child's finger painting.

Her songs are feeling like Jason Mraz's leftovers. [Jul 2004, p.110]

Opener 'Ashes in the Snow' and 'The Battle to Heaven' invoke the CinemaScope bombast of Ennio Morricone, but even their added orchestral heft barely nudges Mono out of a windy, instrumental morass.