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]

Despite these moments [“NBA YoungBoat” and “66”], it’s disheartening that virtually every lyric from Yachty on Lil Boat 2 is wholly unmemorable.

Fragments' gives us vacuous, "you go girl" funk that bites Michael Jackson and Grandmaster Flash without either of them biting back.

How I Knew Her glides by in 40 minutes without making any kind of impression at all, other than giving you a vague desire to hit up Starbucks.

Dreary production from hometown benefactor Eminem does little to liven things up. [Aug 2006, p.82]

Believe sounds so dry and crisp it could have been recorded on a Dell laptop. [Oct 2002, p.113]

The record is so one-note it makes its predecessor sound like an entire season at the London Philharmonic.

A confused, confusing album, MGMT treats contemporaneity as if it were an insulin shot.

Rafter-reaching wuss rock that might appeal to those who find Snow Patrol a little too heavy. [Mar 2007, p.86]

Expectations for a crowdfunded album should be naturally tempered, and yet it’s hard to ignore that none of the songs on TLC present an engaging point of view as smoothly or with as much brass as the group’s biggest hits, “Waterfalls” or “Creep.”

What aren't here are coherently shaped songs, or hooks, or riffs, or melodies that stick.