Made in Brooklyn is mostly filler and little meat.

It wouldn’t be so bad if The Stills didn’t kill the majority of the newly minted loose-limbed percussion and flighty major key romps ("The Mountain")--with drivel choruses and intermediate tricks (flooding the speakers with a porridge of every conceivable instrument).

Ultimately, The Day After is another middling album from a tremendously talented rapper who will never get the respect he deserves because he's all too eager to make compromised crossover records.

While Tres Casas is a large step forward for Molina, and a better album than Segundo, paradoxically, it’s a less enjoyable one.

It’s solid, but it has no power over me.

It has one pace, and that pace is “mature”.

Idealism has some fun with memorable new electro (“The Pulse,” “Home Zone,” “Idealistic”) and nu-rave cuts (“I Want I Want,” “Pogo”). But these guys can’t possibly think fans will believe this fifteen-track behemoth, mostly lacking in subtlety and invention, is the big party they half-seriously claim it to be, over and over and over again.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the kind of music Hot Hot Heat makes. Nevertheless, bands have done it better.

This album is difficult, complicated, pretentious, infuriating, inconsistent, and asks more questions then it answers.

The songs are breezy to the point of vapidity.

The saddest part of all this useless audio-masturbation is that it completely masks the genuinely beautiful pop songs of which Anderson is so capable.

Brock’s idiosyncratic worldview, so much a part of what made Modest Mouse special to begin with, has left the building.

Jacket Full of Danger is an unfocused album that lets his own kitschy gags grab him by the ankles.

The musicianship on this album retains a professional, waxed sheen, and that’s part of the problem: Hammond sticks to the basics, employing pedestrian rock setups whether he’s punking along with gusto or putzing around on the beach.

The songwriting isn’t bad, by any means... But Heumann’s big-picture lyrics—faith, truth, etc.—are as ceaselessly heavy-handed as his guitar work, giving the whole of Rites an overwrought feel, one that can border on comical depending on your mood.

Nas caps a year of NYC-based disappointments with quite possibly the most crushing one yet.

Love Kraft is taken down by sludgy pacing and a paucity of ideas.

Put it this way: do you think "Panic (Hang the DJ)" with its unique branch of bitterness, provincialism, and notions of white pride was the Smiths' best song? You'll be like a hog in shit here, then. If not... avoid. Like the plague.

With Friendly Fire, we get a number of concepts and stabs at self-aware dynamics, but we mostly just see the over-privileged slacker.

His seemingly harmless overarching theme of matters extraterrestrial stitched through each of the album’s tracks somehow compromises their effectiveness.

Freeway is great on guest appearances, but it seems that he can’t string together an entire song by himself.

This is by no means a bad album, but to my ears, it’s worse; it’s mediocre.

Planet of Ice's cerebrally structured songs pull in too many directions to pack a proper punch.

Too many of the ideas seem incomplete, like sketches waiting to be fleshed out.

In a time when The Darkness is successfully parodying cock-rock, members of Velvet Revolver are still earnestly carrying the torch. Whether you think that’s noble or laughable will probably determine your opinion of this album.

Banhart's efforts to expand himself have left him woefully unable to play to his strengths in the rare occasions he bothers with them.

There’s a really good EP waiting to be edited out of this.

It’s hard to fault an album for being too much of a good thing, but there it is. Songs like “Goliath”, “Glass Walls” and “Linus” just blend together. By the end you no longer look forward to another swooping, disheartened melody, you want variety of any kind.