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

All Years Leaving collects plenty of derivative (but enjoyable) music with a few bright moments of originality.

Keane have talked up Under the Iron Sea as being bleaker, more raw than their debut album. It is about the things they have seen over the last two years, the problems, the horrors, the sin. But Keane have not been uncovering the carcases of napalmed babies for the last two years. They’ve been playing music.

This record is dull, predictable aural soup, and dullness in music should be punishable by death.

Admittedly, though it’s clunky and overwrought, the real problem isn’t that the story is tedious or that Olga’s voice is awful--it’s actually weirdly thrilling--it’s that the album simply doesn’t feel as well executed as the premise promises.

Great ideas abound--it’s just that they stumble on their face.

Live From Rome is fairly lyrically sound. In this case, “lyrically sound” should be taken with exactly two grains of salt. One grain would represent the ranting political nature of the content.... Grain #2 simply exclaims, “Dude! Rhyme!”

If you can get past all the arch pretension, When the Deer Wore Blue rewards you with plenty of tunes.

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

The Looks is like the Witness Protection Program of electronic disco, where they put the folks for whom the normal anonymity of dance DJ's is simply not enough.

It’s a trad, tried, and tested sound that they truck around town, exemplified by guest appearances by Conor Deasy of The Thrills and, a little more inexplicably, Maroon 5’s bass player. It’s the middle ground bewteen these two groups which The Tyde occupy.

Ghost lacks the dynamic swing of much of their past material, content to move towards unnecessary cohesion, one that takes all the wide-pupil joy out of their songs.

Body Language isn’t so much a massive artistic leap as it is a total distillation of her sound and style.

All in all, Birth of a Prince seems more like a stepping stone to better things than a fully fledged work in its own right.

Even if [some] of it gets a little one-note, it's an addictive note.

They can’t rap. Period.

Lacking individuality, distinction and imagination, this album is over-produced, overlong and over-indulgent.

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.

This record is packed with deceptively simple melodies -- often aping established pop forms and the singer’s usual array of influences -- that are nearly irresistible because of the detail that Momus and Talaga infuse into each of his songs.

Press Play is like an episode of My Super Sweet 16: though lavishly decorated and probably an honor to be invited to, there's a megalomaniacal presence that ensures the whole party is about glorification of ego rather than actual fun.

The album’s stagnant celebrity worship stifles their ironic, so-dumb-its-addictive intentions.

Panic Movement is far too samey and too much emphasis is put on the lyrics, which are not the Hiss' strong suit.

For completeists only.

It seems to prove a cardinal rule about art and ambition; if you paint in too many colors, you end up with mud brown. The Mars Volta could fill up whole galleries with canvases this color, and with Amputechture, have constructed another monochromatic monument to wild, uninhibited excess.

A fairly enjoyable album as long as one doesn’t saddle it with expectations of being the next Sister Lovers.

The Mix-Up doesn’t present anything innovative, nor is it any sort of triumphant career coda; it just sounds good.

Sure, there are minor ways in which Wratten moves his brainchild away from a punishing sameness, but it’s more than fair to say that the formula that Wratten has built into a veritable cottage industry of crystal clear guitar lines, staid drumming, and a bass tuned to the key of depression is as predictable as the bombastic riffage of AC/DC.

Hope of the States haven’t completely given themselves up to mediocrity yet, but they’re well on their way.