While Shape of Energy isn’t some collection of piss n’ vinegar rock brilliance, it’s a good amount of fun.
Despite an irreverent name that roughly translates to “casual sex” in Japanese, Asobi Seksu is hardly some flip indie-pop outfit.
Tegan and Sara dole out each song hurriedly before the prior one’s refrains can fade from your memory.
Like Anthony Gonzalez before him, James Chapman is a purveyor of sugary, buzzing, shoegaze rock.
The album is marked by a forced sincerity and awkward posturing that’s uncharacteristic of Furtado’s previous work.
Notwithstanding what it might sound like, A Fine Frenzy isn’t the title of some post-punk Brit band festooned in Hot Topic pinstripes.
Imogen Heap makes music that is, in a sense, contradictory.
Third Eye Blind follows a paint-by-numbers blueprint with stunning efficiency.
Modest Mouse’s perfunctory b-sides collection is rich with the band’s trademarks: manic and self-deprecating disillusionment.
None of the album’s benign fluff comes close to exhibiting the raw energy Brooke White brought to American Idol
If post-punk revival is the musical equivalent of fast food, then Civilized is most assuredly its Happy Meal.
Regina Spektor’s fifth album, Far, follows all the usual rules and memes of bouncy folk-pop, often with unbridled glee.
Fourth is refreshing and earnest enough to avoid the tedium that’s plagued Pete Yorn’s recent output.
Wait for Me does just enough to succeed as a dalliance in minimalist aura.
In the end, the musical heart of Hombre Lobo is neither intriguing nor well developed.
B.S. offers nothing that wasn’t already tried on 2001’s Anarchy.
In the end, the collection’s bevy of elegance, purity, and passion is simply 10 tracks too long.
The album’s musical skeleton is a patchwork that borrows from the influence of folk torchbearers past and present.
The album rarely strays from a three-part formula of incessant lockstep percussion, half-muttered nasal phrases, and bleeding melodies.
Perhaps to expect more than tasteless rock candy is too tall an order for a band fronted by Taylor Hanson.