An unpleasant change is clear in the first instant; Summers’ voice is pushed to the front of the mix, and the over-the-top choruses and limpid lyricism that comes through is enough to make you blush.

Sullivan and Cox are attentive enough to make room for understated fiddler Claudia Mogel, who keeps the band’s country flame burning when they flail and strut. None of this, though, is enough to strip the album of a staleness and fatigue

Pullhair Rubeye isn’t awful, but it could’ve been great.

In some ways is a step backwards towards their rockist, meat-and-potatoes roots, and in other ways is a quantum leap into the unknown.

To be fair Free The Bees isn’t a bad record as such, it’s just that this backwards looking, past-is-best philosophy so often smacks of a distasteful and conservative obsession with authenticity and tradition, as if sounding like the past is more important than sounding like yourselves.

Sadly, Suit, is exactly what it purports to be: the business-side of a duo of albums. And, in the world of pop, there’s nothing worse than sounding like business as usual.

They’re obviously enjoying success and using it to explore a wider musical range, but they haven’t translated that admirable tendency into a coherent vision.

Tracyanne Campbell has a glassy, gorgeous voice, but it’s also a curiously inexpressive one. When she’s left to carry less than strong songs alone, they suffer as a result.

Ultimately, The Meanest of Times stumbles when the folksy frayed stitching is torn away, exposing nothing but atrophied punk muscle.

The one thing you can't accuse Under the Blacklight of is being boring, but it abides by an either/or sort of mentality that presumes that a complete lack of substance is the only alternative to the kind of music Rilo Kiley and their pals made in 2002.

The vast majority of this release just doesn’t stick together coherently and suffers because of it.

The meandering songs coalesce into an uninspired mass, burying the few good moments within it.

It would be difficult to convince yourself that The Sun is anything but meandering and listless.

As beautiful as many of these songs are in terms of immediacy, their lackluster instrumentation never allows them any lasting appeal.

An entirely mediocre album that hints at a greatness that may lie beneath.

The Machine EP is a bizarre experiment for the YYYs: is this studio-glazed rocker the one that will show their true colors - or is this just a little endeavor to see what they can pull off? Either way, I’m pretty pissed.

Slideling eschews all of McCulloch's recognizable quirks and endearing pretensions, replacing them with slick generic “mature” songs and arrangements that make Coldplay sound adventurous.

You can see the Angel/Heaven/Cocaine lyrics coming a mile off and the predictable bass that punctuates them soon becomes just as banal.

You best spend your time listening to older Xzibit joints and wait around for the next one to buy new.

Part of the problem is that the melodies are spicy, but the riffs are pedestrian, almost nu-metal.

Because of the Times validates the theory that the Kings of Leon are merely the Eagles in wolf’s clothing (or the Strokes in overalls), being that the album’s collection of tales, focusing solely on hard-living and harder women, are but hokey pulp fictions disguised with mellowed sincerity, played out on mythical dirt roads and overgrown farmhouses.

The problems on the album don’t stem from creativity or intellect, but from execution.

So Amazin’ isn’t quite pop and it isn’t quite rebellion--it’s straight-up high school.

Greedy Baby doesn’t make sense sans visuals, and even with them it makes… little sense.

Honeycomb proves too rigid and self-serious to make good on Black’s strengths.

This is a band that, rightfully, just sounds tired.

Trying too hard to mimic his band’s tried-and-true telepathy with only karaoke-level results, it's easy to see he thinks he’s run out of ways to experiment.

Instead of consolidating their respective strengths, Broken Boy Soldiers is White and Benson compromising them in favor of finding an agreeable but ultimately dull and colorless middle ground.