By no stretch of the imagination is Beerbongs & Bentleys a good album, but it’s admirable in its commitment to its strangely singular dirtbag vision of L.A. luxury. It isn’t consistent enough to mold Post Malone fully into the Soundcloud rap version of Ed Sheeran, but it will certainly allow him to stick around for at least a few more years.

Ghost drowns in Spacemen 3-like drone, feedback, and reverb until the tunes congeal into a deliberately muddy, impenetrable trance. [June 2008, p.104]

He's brilliant when juxtaposing rhythmic brutality against euphonious familiarity; but here, he seems exhausted by the former and ashamed of the latter.

For now, we’re stuck with a record that’s both intentionally and unintentionally frustrating: A record about self-loathing where the actual remorse is absent, where its creator would insist that’s the point.

The album flounders during their attempts at arty funk. [Jan 2007, p.92]

The Hazards of Love feels like a gambit, with the Decemberists betting that increased bombast and literary aspiration will make up for decreased attention to pop craft. It's a hazardous bet that yields spectacular sparks but ultimately asks for much more than it's willing to give.

A blatant stab for radio... [Aug 2001, p.134]

Green Naugahyde is all rubbery, aggro Bootsy, picking up where 1999's nü-metal-chasing Antipop left off.

The Horrors are too shackled by kitsch to scare life into such creaky punk posturing. [Jun 2007, p.94]

There’s no question that Jess Glynne is a very good singer, but her debut proves her best work thus far is on songs that aren’t even hers.

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]