Ultimately, it's the stuff of a common nightmare--creepily thrilling, but not worth reliving.

It’s no more mixtape-like than anything else they’ve done, but Drift feels unusually scattered despite its lean runtime.

Relying on sturdy-legged piano chords ('I've Seen Enough'), boogie rock ('Mexican Dogs'), and caffeinated backbeats to boost Willett's narratives, Loyalty to Loyalty is rarely subtle.

Masters of the Burial lacks the character to be more than the sum of its lovely parts: fiddles, regret, and a pretty voice.

Mainly they noodle through indeterminate world-music jams that’d feel equally ignorable at mud festivals and at ethnic restaurants.

Whether they're trying to obscure the songs' perceived flaws or make some sort of dazzling artistic statement, the band opts for grandiose production (courtesy of Jacknife Lee) and sprawling arrangements--cue the orchestra and the choir--that blunt the effect of Lightbody's deceptively strong songwriting.

This is a pivot, this record, and a shrewd one, but "shrewd" and "boring" are not mutually exclusive.

Houglass blatantly resembles sedate, later-day Depeche. [Nov 2007, p.118]

Van Weezer continues that trajectory with its hard-rock/metal ethos, but it seldom feels like anything beyond a novelty.

There's charm in its corniness. [Feb 2007, p.82]

There are traces of reverb and chicken-scratch guitar, but the band's drill-press instro-rock lacks thegenre's spacial dislocation and sense of thematic possibility. [Feb 2008, p.92]

Before I Self Destruct starts with 50 Cent literally growling, and it ends, on 'Could've Been You,' with Kelly crooning about sniffing his own excrement. Both sound equally laughable.

Truth subverts metal's natural will to power with dreamy, ambient passages that are never as sublime as the band clearly thinks they are. [Dec 2006, p.98]

Where her past albums felt messy but painfully sincere, Younger Now comes off as safe and overly sanitized, with the frisson that made Cyrus a star all but entirely blasted away. ... Still, the album has some plainly good songs.

This is a cold, calculated record lacking in personality, though it certainly tries to deliver something that Scott is incapable of.

The fan service can only go so far, though. With each successive spin, the LP’s post-reunion giddiness recedes, revealing the overarching déja vu as a crutch.

Diplo and Co. threw everything at the wall and turned around, pretending it stuck when all that’s really left is the splatter from undercooked leftovers.

It's well within the Boss' right to try and freshen up old material, especially 18 albums in, but this one lacks a through-line beyond the distracting (and occasionally straight-up embarrassing) Morello.

Interpol sounds both strangely distant and overly familiar, like a band struggling to remember who they are.

Music tailor-made for the world's hippest elevators. [Nov. 2000, p.200]

A sweaty, first-take orgy that sometimes suggests Tom Waits fronting the Stones, only clumsier. [May 2007, p.84]

Overall, The Bridge has a very Reagan-era vibe, and not just due to appearances by KRS-One and Big Daddy Kane.

Th Peas keep it exuberantly funky.

Vanderslice is tortured and diffuse even by Death Cab standards. [Sep 2005, p.109]

Moments of transcendence occasionally emerge from the murk, but not often enough.

Bridges' country-fried drawl gets wonky (see the shuffling "Blue Car"), but when the pieces come together -- as on laid-back, folksy charmers like "Everything but Love" and "Maybe I Missed the Point" -- the result is as comfortable and unpretentious as the Dude's bathrobe.

Grainger's solo efforts are more restrained than DFA 1979's sweaty frenzy, and ultimately, his blues-frilled rock would be pretty pallid if not for the playfully sarcastic undercurrents.

764-Hero faithfully, almost methodically practices the dying art of melodic rock songs with no particular point to them.