The music is appallingly predictable, unoriginal, uninspiring, boring, over-polished, and vain.

This is expertly crafted music, but perhaps too intent on being discomforting: the music intentionally aims to unsettle you.

On 200 Years, Ben and Elisa play their mortality out, unnerved and reassuring, wisely, beautifully.

"It's Kickin' In" sounds like Linnell doing karaoke over a failed garage rock single, and most of the rest sounds like, well, Fountains of Wayne.

All the riffs, drums, and lyrics seem to struggle against the current of a constant drone, with odd sounds bubbling out of the muddy puddle, yet remaining stagnant, as it were. There is nothing remarkable or striking about this mirror’s explosion.

An album that, despite its hallucinogenic tendencies, is painfully boring.

This is extremely addictive stuff, and after only a few listens, every track will attempt to/will succeed in worming its way into the willing listener's brain.

Unfortunately, the goodwill that Eminem builds up with these engrossing and macabre Mathers family confessions are too often torn down by his tedious turns as a goofy court jester.

It Falls Apart is a mess of overproduction and features bland songwriting.

The thick and poorly affected patois, the overproduction, and the sheer terribleness of the songs on Trapped Animal seem, at best, a huge dent in The Slits’ otherwise immaculate armor.

It's not like Again and Again is a terrible album; in fact, it's an almost uniformly enjoyable one.

And the mixing problems extend far beyond Corgan’s voice. The Band of a Hundred Murderous Guitars has turned into a modern-radio-rock band.

For Years is at its best when Airhead is working in the first of these modes, the more melodic one.

There isn't enough unforced spontaneity or meaningful pop-craft on The Vision to sustain a full-length album, and a smorgasbord of tasty synths isn't enough to inspire vision.

Anti-folk or not, the band exudes confidence and camaraderie, and The Bundles surely won't disappoint their longtime fans.

Younger Now is a hookless, joyless, profitable success.

For all of their wonderful contributions to modern pop music, McCulloch and Sergeant aspired for too much this time around.

Autumn, Again is a rarely dynamic dream-pop album, an ideal caffeinated companion to birch skies and stubbly faces. It is a secret pleasure like the sound of a sleeping town and the feeling of control that comes with the first morning light.

The album is essentially a tried-and-true big-budget rock album gimmick writ large: smother the listeners in a minute or so of formless noise (using the artiest guitar and keyboard settings imaginable, of course), and then snap them out of the doldrums with the sweep of a heroic chord progression.

It sheds their debut’s pastoral psych for a spacey romanticism, and in the process, its airy synthesizers and reverb’d guitars evoke a yearning that’s too vague and indeterminate to be a yearning for anything in particular.

His flow never deviates from that of Doggystyle, but the production on his hits demonstrates an effort to evolve with the times.

Señor Smoke suffers from nothing more then a total lack of discernable hooks to balance out the glaringly juvenile lyrics, cheese-filled synthesizers, and schlock-rock guitar stylings.

The Real Feel is a solid step in the right direction, both sonically and lyrically.

Nu-Mark's beats still refresh the old school in the J5 way we've become accustomed, but the other beats here represent a sad cross-section of mainstream styles, totally missing the point of their first three albums.

This is the sound of a band in transition.

Lackluster sound quality, predictable track construction, and the utter absence of emotional push and/or pull yield a record that comes off more like a product placement than a work of art.

There is no sense of nostalgia here, only pure awkwardness and honest decadence that take the definition of 'kitsch' to unexpected artistic levels.

The style hasn't changed, the lyrics haven't suffered, and the charm and charisma is still clearly evident.

Musically speaking, Bones is a promising young talent with the benefit of access to many other skilled players. Lyrically, however, he’s far from refinement.

Daft Punk have released an album so bland and repetitive that it may actually call into question all their past glory. It doesn't seem fathomable, but alas, the proof is seemingly inscribed in each note.

Minus a few semi-refreshing exceptions that see Brian Wilson team up with old bandmate Jardine--is more or less artistically bankrupt, failing as it largely does to communicate or emotionalize anything of Wilson’s concrete being or of the 21st century in which he now finds himself.

YOKOKIMTHURSTON displays an issue that affects several contemporary aesthetic forms when they become institutionalized: no matter how transgressive, shocking, or committed an artistic statement can be, it still remains enclosed within the safe, whitewashed, antiseptic confines of the art gallery under the sheltering halo of “high-culture” values, for the admiration of a see-but-do-not-touch enlightened elite.

Raditude is not a great album or even an interesting one.

Neither the downfall nor demystification of the group, the truly awful Ten$ion only further tangles the mess of questions surrounding Die Antwoord.

Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings is essentially an audio sketchbook, and its contents are necessarily rough, half-formed, and fragmentary. There is pleasure to be found here, particularly in Cobain’s left-field excursions into Burroughs-ian collage, but these pleasures will hold scant value to anyone not already convinced of the author’s peculiar genius.

While VanGaalen seems to be overflowing with great ideas, I’d prefer if he reined them in a little more tightly on his next release.

Instead of in-your-face intricacy and complex rhythms, Travistan displays a much more restrained complexity that doesn't jump up and down for attention; and replacing the innovative vocal lines are cloying melodies that never seem to end.

Forgettable melodies and arrangements abound on the mid-tempo tracks that comprise the bulk of Moonshine.

Divided By Night has few worthy moments and a whole bunch earmarked for the couple of "Fast & Furious" films. The guys still have the goods, but this album will not be well-remembered.

Three 6 Mafia’s aspiration to evolve seems to have manifested itself on Last 2 Walk, from production to sound to lyrics. Having taken their novel sound to its lofty limits, it is time for the group to change and progress towards another musical frontier. However, their aspirations of progressing by melding Hollywood and the hood have largely failed.

Reasons to Live sounds like old summer afternoons.

Wasif is able to create a lot out of very little, making every sound count, and more importantly, making sure that the songwriting, singing, and melody are top-notch.

The Dark Leaves is too uneven to transcend its shortcomings, and that poses more of a conundrum than if it had been simply awful. There are great songs here, but it’s frustrating to see them so outmatched by the lesser efforts.

Although Hagerty's mercurial inventiveness is occasionally electrifying, it's not clear who will have the patience to comb through experiments that generally fall flat.

At its worst, it wants memory over future. At its best, it wants to remember who sings next, after the shades fade.

Maybe we're supposed to love this album because it's the musical equivalent of a KFC Double-Down, filled with fancy co-stars and production, deep-fried, and devoid of any intellectual or nutritional value.

Hymns, unfortunately, does not mark the logical next step for the band, nor does it exactly tread new ground. Rather, it denotes a descent into self-indulgence that’s paradoxically reckless and complacent.

Unfortunately, two good songs do little to temper the overall disappointment with this new direction, and having thoroughly enjoyed Take Me to the Sea, it really pains me to denigrate its successor.

Completists will appreciate the ability to experience the Art Cologne installation in the convenience of their own home, but everyone else should have no trouble finding more compelling examples of this theme, from the most difficult noise music to the most pleasant synth-pop.

Your willingness to stick with McPhun from here on out depends entirely how much you enjoy listening to music that sounds like a meticulous recreation of 80s dance pop.

His reunion with frequent collaborators belies a rich history of discovering and championing new voices. This ostensible distance from which Kanye preaches reveals King’s true tension: Kanye, like Kendrick on DAMN., is asking for our prayers, while also distancing himself from our hands and our mouths. And it doesn’t work. ... He has artistically lost track of his audience and himself in its midst.

Despite Beep Beep's shortcomings, they do get over on energy alone.

Booze and Reynolds maintain a consistent level of awfulness throughout, but really bring their A-game to songs like the bludgeoningly-repetitive 'Sparkly Sweater,.'

Yet as someone who may struggle to believe what they say, I’m enamored with Ringhofer’s wild exuberance in proclaiming them, in repurposing them, and, by extension, I would even say in explicating them.

Weezer's once unique aesthetic has been replaced by something formulaic and ultimately too safe.

Demanding, absorbing, and, for better or worse, never feeling like a cohesive album, Mother of Curses is a collection of shocking truths set to stun the senses.

Pressure Chief won't change your mind on the band, although I will call it their weakest effort simply because there's no memorable single like "The Distance," "Short Skirt/Long Jacket," or even "Never There."

While Blood Like Lemonade offers nothing new, its depiction of a seasoned group reveling in their own nostalgia makes for good listening.

Freedomland is frustrating because it documents possibly compelling works by a band whose performances captured here were probably compelling, too. It just doesn’t reach the standards of prior work, so I’ll just keep waiting for their next studio album.

Destiny Fulfilled starts off pitifully and only gets worse.

With Funstyle, she has crafted above all else an experience, and one that is entertaining and rewarding in ways that few records can be. It's an arduous listen, and as music it is unquestionably terrible; but as a musical experience, it's something that shouldn't be missed.

While the tension and confusion have passed, we are unfortunately left with a pretty disappointing piece of work.

Where Newcombe’s music once sounded fresh and lively, his political message both controversial and effectual, on My Bloody Underground his music is neither fascinating nor engaging.

While Tical 0: The Prequel is an adequate and at times entertaining record, too much collaboration has overshadowed the rhyming prowess and lyrical wittiness of Method Man.

So much of listening to Ardipithecus feels immeasurable by good or bad. Ardipithecus fails as a pop record, because it’s barely aware that it’s a part of that conversation.

The alien, blank dead-eyedness of Britney Jean is frightening, because it feels like it’s all will.i.am trusts Britney with.

Truly, though, I like to think that The Bridge takes the best of early- to mid-’90s hip-hop from New York, the synthesized sound of the last five to ten years, an interesting blend of MCs, and an ear for a slammin’ beat, and puts them together in a package that isn’t necessarily mind-blowing, but that is at least complete, well-intended, and meaningful.

Underneath Lil Xan’s disengaged delivery, TOTAL XANARCHY ends up slogging through his sketches of abandonment, addiction, and, conversely, fame and success, with total listlessness.

Simply put: the lyrics are simply too vacuous and cliched, the production tinny and lacking any real thump, and Scwhartz’ charm? Nowhere to be found.

Both infectiously danceable and highly intelligent.

They are to hip-hop what No Doubt was to ska.

I want to say “you’ve gotta hear it to believe it,” but there’s too much good music out there to waste your time on the bad--let alone the bad that knows it’s bad.

The other 14 contributions barely stand apart from one another, a rushed bile of the same sounds being used over and over again by unidentifiable producers, with only Bonobo delivering a track whose atmosphere extends beyond that of gimmicky tie-in music territory.

Pullhair Rubeye is significant not because of its aesthetic and non-conceptual disposition, but also for its dedication to instinct and brave novelty (in the best sense of the word).

In the end, then, it's not that The Devil's Rain is a bad album, but it's by far the weakest link in the band's catalog, and coming at a time when faith in the group is at an all-time low.

Lulu is a joyless mess, a grim, humorless record with no notion of when to say "when."

Mos Def’s third album is worth a careful listen: it’s not a happy record, and there are few, if any, genius rhymes. But it speaks volumes about the frustration and resignation of the underprivileged.

Their insides have been swapped: the dirty, heavy, colossal, dark-nastiness has been replaced with arena-rock aspirations and fresh-white, paper-thin production.

Like all Nickelback releases before it, All The Right Reasons was made for all the wrong ones and follows all the formulas and clichés you should be bored to death of by now.

It turns out he's simply not the Nerd Messiah; he's creative and emotional and gifted, but at least right now, he'd do better making rap songs rather than ambient soundscapes.