The most disappointing albums of 2020

The K-pop girl group with the biggest Western crossover to date, Blackpink had everything going for them heading into 2020: their biggest-ever single (2018's "Ddu-Du Ddu-Du"), superstar collaborations with Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez, actual headlining gigs at festivals -- it was their moment to shine. Yet while it's been well known that their earlier material was always stronger (see: the absolute banger that is "Boombayah"), their long-in-the-works debut full-length, "The Album", disappoints on virtually every front. Make no mistake: their Cardi B collaboration ("Bet You Wanna") could be a massive hit single for good reason, but somehow, Blackpink is convinced that their best material is their most borderline-atonal. Blinks will eat it up regardless, but the tired squelchy synth sounds of "Pretty Savage" and the been-there-done-that pop of "Lovesick Girls" feel hackneyed, even expected at this point. While other female K-pop acts like Twice, ITZY, and Red Velvet continue to experiment and innovate, Blackpink's debut salvo feels more like the album they thought their fans wanted to hear than the one they wanted to make. Hints of originality and enthusiasm peak through (like on the solid "Love to Hate Me"), but overall, "The Album" is not how we like that.

Prior to "Rare", the last full-length we got from Selena Gomez was 2015's surprising "Revival", an album that embraced a strange new kind of pop minimalism that proved to define Gomez's modern style. That release netted her numerous hits, and in the years that followed, she dropped standalone singles that ranged from the stunning (the Talking Heads-sampling "Bad Liar") to the tired (the Gucci Mane feature "Fetish"). As such, "Rare" was poised to be the record that had Gomez retake her pop princess throne -- and to her credit, she garnered her first-ever chart-topper with "Lose You to Love Me" -- but as it turns out, "Rare" is a rehash of "Revival" in the worst way. Produced within an inch of its life, Gomez goes a bit harder into her club sound on "Rare", and as such loses a bit of personality in the process, as tracks like "Dance Again" and the mid-tempo 6LACK feature "Crowded Room" feel like they could've been recorded by any random Top 40 starlet. A few times, Gomez's personality reveals itself (as on "Look At Her Now", which features a catchy use of saying "mmm"), but a five-year wait should've yielded a far more interesting record than this. At least worth picking up the Deluxe Edition alone if not just to round up all those excellent pre-release singles.

For Georgia native Ernest Weatherly Greene Jr., his chillwave project Washed Out has yielded him great dividends, as his striking, dynamic productions melded the best of laidback synthpop with mature songwriting, netting him some small hits and even a visual album in 2017 (the excellent "Mister Mellow") that allows him to experiment and get all his creative sillies out. For "Purple Noon", he's gone back to a much simpler sound -- in fact, many fans and critics clocked it for being too simple. With too many similar-ish textures used and the tempo remaining about the same for the entire runtime, "Purple Noon" eventually becomes a pleasant-if-forgettable haze of a listen, staying in a single lane the whole time. Had he changed around his vocal pitching a bit, there'd be a bit more differentiation between the tracks, but as it stands, "Purple Noon" is a surprising step back for an artist who before now had always been looking forward.

It didn't have to be like this. In 2017, freed from the clutches of her controlling producer Dr. Luke, Kesha made the record she always wanted to make in the form of "Rainbow", and it was a stunning pop celebration, indulging in everything from curse-filled acoustic bops to insanely-catchy mall-punk to ballads heavy on catharsis. It felt like Kesha was finally given creative free reign, and the prospect of her making a more upbeat, fun-filled record in a post-Luke era was nothing short of spectacular, with the Big Freedia-assisted lead single "Raising Hell" raising all of our hopes. Unfortunately, while "High Road" isn't a bad record by any means, it falls hard from the artistic highs Kesha achieved with "Rainbow". Her attempt at a dirty club track with "Kinky" feels like a toothless shadow of the actual dirty club tracks that she launched her career with, and while "High Road" features a lot more acoustic songs this time out, very few of them leave much of an impact. For all of the colorful poses she strikes on "High Road", what's missing is a bit of gravity to ground her sentiments. She achieves real catharsis once with the heartwrenching "Father Daughter Dance", but all that great song does is point to what's missing on the rest of the record. We know she has another masterpiece in her -- it's just a shame she couldn't release them two in a row.

Ariana Grande has been on an absolute hot-streak. While her 2018 record "Sweetener" did its job and made some hits, it was her quick turnaround 2019 album "thank u, next" that truly felt like she had found her artistic voice. Catty, sultry, and surprisingly nuanced, "thank u, next" ended up being one of the biggest albums of her career, and before anyone was even talking about her next release, she spent the first half of 2020 racking up chart-toppers, both forgettable (her Justin Bieber quarantine collaboration "Stuck with U") and instantly iconic (her Lady Gaga duet "Rain on Me"). So with just a few week's notice, Grande dropped "Positions", her sixth full-length, and it's -- passable. While the inclusion of string quartets helps liven up the sonics of a few key tracks, "Positions", by and large, is a surprisingly forgettable sex album. Her duet with The Weeknd is sultry but dry, her dirty talking always needs to be explained (as on "34+35"), and overall, "Positions" just feels very surface-level and fleeting. In many ways, you don't want actual depth from your bedroom jams, but as tracks like the incredible "My Hair" proves, you can have a sex record that also has depth. We're not here to rain on Ariana's parade, but she's struck far more interesting "Positions".

Woof. In the four years following the commercial and artistic zenith that Justin Bieber reached with 2015's "Changes", you'd think that he'd launch a new era awash in hype and epic collaborations. Yet when the godawful "Yummy" was unleashed as his big comeback single, fans were wondering why the Biebs would hang all of his hopes on such an undercooked sex jam. As it turns out, "Changes" is a reprehensibly boring record about marital intimacy, featuring bland and tired beats married to such groan-inducing lines as "Shout out to your mom and dad for makin' you" and "Next thing, you're on top of me / Okay with this, I call that a win-win." While Ariana Grande also dropped a fairly underwhelming sex jam record in 2020, at least her missteps were light: nothing ruins the mood more than Bieber laying out a line like "Set my feelings to the side, they all got dusty on a shelf." This is a bad record that deservedly underperformed. While he'll always have hit collaborations to fall back on, Bieber needs to find a purpose that fits him more comfortably than his current one. No one wants to hear a married loverman in constant need to prove just how good he is in bed.

Following Eminem's rightly-maligned 2017 record "Revival", Marshall Mathers has found a new, fun way to give back to his fans: with the surprise studio album release. In 2018, "Kamikaze" came out of nowhere, and while a lot of excitement surrounded it for a good week, it got overshadowed by this entertaining beef with Machine Gun Kelly, resulting in his non-album diss track "Killshot" becoming his biggest hit in years. With the also-surprise-released new album "Music to Be Murdered By" -- well, it's more of the same. While his speed-rapping on the Juice WRLD-featuring single "Godzilla" is truly an impressive feat to behold, much of "Murdered" circles tropes he's covered many times before, like his battles with alcoholism on the morose (and watered down) "Darkness". It's nowhere near as bad as "Revival" or "Encore", but it's a bad sign when the most interesting part of your new album is its release method.

You know your new album is in trouble when you can't decide on a release date. Or a lead single. Or a title, for that matter. Indeed, Sam Smith's "Love Goes" was originally called "To Die For", and its title and release date were ultimately changed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet the first inklings of potential singles had been trotted out since the summer of 2018, and they were a mixed bag: some were boring ("Fire on Fire"), some were terrible ("I'm Ready" with Demi Lovato), and some were truly spectacular ("How Do You Sleep?", "Dancing with a Stranger" with Normani). None of these songs made "Love Goes" proper, instead tacked on at the end as a "bonus disc", and it's a real shame too because even their less successful singles still sound more interesting than what ended up making the final tracklist. Leaning into a more generic and radio-accessible pop style, the heartbreak anthems littered all over "Love Goes" do little to show off Smith's songwriting chops, instead putting their voice in front of uninspired arrangements. It's honestly quite a letdown because Smith has delivered better material than this, but "Love Goes" feels remarkably hesitant. Consider this "Love" gone.

When you've been around long enough to be considered a legend, you rarely run into much pushback. Even Bob Dylan's lesser albums find kind words from legacy print media, and Rolling Stone Magazine will always give unfettered praise to new records from U2 and Bruce Springsteen. For Lucinda Williams' 15th studio full-length, "Good Souls, Better Angels", she's unafraid to use her stellar band to help give her songs a muscular rock edge that she's only flirted with before, but the problem is, despite all this fury, her songs don't go much of anywhere this time out. Despite her legend status, the press -- and her fans -- have felt let down by this good-but-not-stellar collection of songs. Musically, her anti-Trump number "Man Without a Soul" is sturdy, but lyrically, she goes for dry clichés when singing lines like "You're a man without a soul / All the money in the world / Will never fill that hole." Again, there are some good moments scattered about, but when you're delivering masterpieces on a regular basis, a "good enough" record still feels like a massive stepdown, especially for someone of Lucinda Williams' unimpeachable status.

Honestly, what is Animal Collective even doing these days? For being one of the most heralded alt-psych acts of the 2000s, their quality control has fallen perceptibly in the last few years, now landing on our survey of disappointing releases for a third consecutive year. While it's no secret that they take their sometimes-intoxicated jams and rework them into more interesting shapes, "Bridge to Quiet" feels so utterly fleeting and aimless. Still lost in the near-ambient vibes of their 2018 soundtrack "Tangerine Reef", "Bridge to Quiet" takes four songs and makes them stretch out to a full 34 minutes, with opener "Rain in Cups" wandering around in search of an actual melody. It's remarkably underbaked and is made even more frustrating by the fact that some good melodic moments pop out on occasion. When the guitars on and backing vocals on the title track come in, they give us the first taste of something approaching a listenable song -- but it's the last track on the album and neither of these elements kicks into full gear until five minutes in. These boys are in bad need of an editor these days. (But props to them for at least changing the insensitive name and art of some of their early albums and donating some royalties to charity.)

He may not be a household name, but producer Ricky Reed, who previously released his music under the moniker Wallpaper, has slowly emerged as one of the most interesting pop producers working today, having penned and produced hits for the likes of Jason Derulo, Twenty One Pilots, Leon Bridges, Kesha, and -- of recent note -- Lizzo. In interviews, he always comes off as a humble guy who's just happy to be where he's at, and so for his first true-and-proper studio debut, "The Room", he ropes in guests ranging from Leon Bridges to Alessia Cara to the Dirty Projectors to My Morning Jacket's Jim James. As a producer and writer who has a golden ear for hot new sounds, there's nothing wrong with his solo record being understated, but why oh why did it have to be so dry? With every downtrodden and mid-tempo song hermetically sealed to ensure no personality gets out, the clearly-talented Reed has dropped a whole record of "album tracks," with no real standouts to speak of. It's pleasant listening but also instantly forgettable. It's a bit of a letdown from a clearly talented guy, but hey: we're still listening to every new song he's putting out with rapt interest regardless.

For a moment, there was hope. After the release of her 2017 disaster of a record "Witness", it seemed that Katy Perry had officially lost her way, releasing singles that underperformed or -- even worse for a pop star of her status -- failed to even chart. Yet when "Never Really Over" dropped in the summer of 2019, it felt like the old Katy was back, full of forward-thinking production and effervescent feel-good vibes. Was the "American Idol" judge finally back in prime world-conquering form? Well, the next single was the annoying "Small Talk". Then came the wretched Charlie Puth co-write "Harleys in Hawaii". Then 2020 saw the much-delayed release of "Smile", her sixth studio album, and it is operating in a universe far divorced from the one we're currently living in. Sounding like a mid-2000s pop record with its throwback beats, DJ scratching, and synth horns, it feels like after her vision of futuristic pop music was rejected by the masses, she retreated to a formula that would work -- except she retreated too far back, and is offering a record that doesn't feel nostalgic so much as it feels already-dated. The drab pop guitar workout "Tucked" feels like the worst-ever rewrite of Weezer's "Island in the Sun" ever conceived, and the canned strings of "Champagne Problems" come off as the kind of song that Kylie Minogue would turn down. We were ready to forgive "Witness" as a simple misstep after years on top, but now that we've heard "Smile", it's clear that Katy Perry's untouchable period is over and she's as out-of-touch with the pop world as she's ever been.

In the Spring of 2019, Diplo -- the super-producer who can work in just about any genre he feels like and drops countless random collaborations a year -- surprised many by releasing a lovely little song with country singer Cam called "So Long". Simple, to-the-point, and with a fascinating pop filter laid over the fiddle work, it felt like an understated entry in the dance/country sweepstakes, and against all odds, it worked. The only problem? Diplo kept it up, eventually leading to the release of his full-length hybrid record "Thomas Wesley Chapter 1: Snake Oil". Taking exactly the wrong lessons from why his Cam number worked so well, "Snake Oil" is simply too dancey to entertain country fans, and a bit too country to entertain his club acolytes. At times, the collaborations are outright illogical, like bringing in country's professional pretty boy Thomas Rhett to guest on a track with ... rapper Young Thug? Did Noah Cyrus really have to show up for this? Are the Jonas Brothers the new Statler Brothers? (Hint: they're not.) The lurid stomp-clap number "Do Si Do" with Blanco Brown is so bad it almost borders on good, but overall, we're just hoping Diplo comes to his senses and never releases a "Chapter 2" of this twangy sludge.

When Mike Skinner's The Streets unleashed their debut album "Original Pirate Material" in 2002, it successfully crossed over to the North American indie and college circuits, introducing loads of suburban white kids to the U.K.'s own distinct brand of hip-hop in the form of garage and two-step. With his cheap-but-clever beats and everyman rapping style, there was a genuine appeal to Skinner's persona, and his 2004 follow-up "A Grand Don't Come for Free" cemented his status as a critical darling. Then ... it all fell apart. In a nearly methodical fashion, each subsequent album got worse, with Skinner's rapping becoming increasingly disjointed and his beats somehow getting shoddier despite his success. Although " None of Us Are Getting Out of This Life Alive" is alleged to be a mixtape and even has the notable boon of a Tame Impala cameo, it's clear that Skinner's artistic muse left him a long time ago, with tracks like the deliberately offbeat "You Can't Afford Me" jumping to the front of the pack as one of the worst songs he's ever made. While the warped synths of tracks like "Eskimo Ice" might appeal to the emerging PC Music/hyperpop movement, even those genre fans have artists they can listen to that are better than modern-day The Streets.

"Delirium" deserves more respect. Ellie Goulding's third album came out in 2015, and while it was anchored by a fairly large hit ("On My Mind"), she didn't spin off radio staples for years after like she did on her past two albums, so in the eyes of some, "Delirium" was a bit of a commercial disappointment. (Shame too, as album tracks like "Codes" were some of the best pop songs she's ever done.) Whether it be a cynical course correction or Goulding simply wanting to move away from the EDM-flecked radio smashes she built her name on, "Brightest Blue" is a more paired-down record, one that emphasizes simple arrangements and ballads instead of stadium-filling romantic synth tunes. Unfortunately, this means that "Brightest Blue" is the most boring record Goulding has put out to date. With every piano and drum machine given a too-sleek sheen that drains any life out of it, "Brighest Blue" feels like Goulding is tip-toeing around the edges of a new sound without ever taking the leap to fully embrace it. Sure, "Power" was a great single and a gimme for fans; and when "Tides" kicks into gear, it's a solid track, but when you're lost in the low-tempo depths of ballads like "New Heights" and "Flux", the album's momentum flatlines. We've heard better from Goulding, and with any luck, she'll find her spark again. May it ever burn brighter than "Brightest Blue".

For the North Carolina collective that is Future Islands, 2014's "Singles" was the kind of record that people point to whenever they describe a "breakthrough": it was beloved by critics, launched them as a commercial force, and made Samuel T. Herring and his crew ever closer to mainstream acceptance. The only problem? The records that followed. While there was nothing inherently wrong with 2017's sleek "The Far Field", 2020's demure "As Long As You Are" finds the group simply churning out yet another Future Islands record: there's not a lot of innovation to be found. "For Sure" and "Born in a War" are unquestioned upbeat bops, but they also sound like reblogged versions of their prior unquestioned upbeat bops. The synths still shine and ring as they did on their last few records, Herring still speak-wails like he always does -- there's just nothing that fresh about their sixth full-length. Especially after a three-year wait, you'd think that the boys would have some new tricks up their sleeve, but "As Long As You Are" finds their sound exactly where they left it.

Born out of the ashes of a short-lived dance group, the moody English rockers Doves released some truly legendary albums at the start of the new century, with 2000's "Lost Souls" and 2002's "The Last Broadcast" cementing them as a post-rock group with an ample handle of texture and tone. Following 2009's underwhelming "Kingdom of Rust", the band took a break and sought solo projects, until a 2019 charity gig lead to a decade-in-the-waiting reunion and a new album in the form of 2020's "The Universal Want". Sadly, "The Universal Want" leaves us wanting, as their sound remains virtually unchanged all this time later. For some acts, more of the same is an inherently good thing, giving the fans what they want, but with every drum hit, guitar chime, and piano pound taken to the max at every song, "The Universal Want" is too glossed over to penetrate, as every song ultimately fades into another as part of an ambling midtempo groove. While previous records had them use silence and changes of pace and texture to help differentiate their sound, this "Universal Want" is unfortunately rather forgettable. We always want more Doves albums, but we don't "Want" this.

While Jónsi is best known for his work with Sigur Rós, his solo discography is a wild creature, taking on several monikered forms (Dark Morph, Frakkur) and even encompassing soundtrack work for films like "We Bought a Zoo" and "How to Train Your Dragon 2". While his first truly proper solo outing in 2010 was a joyous, buoyant affair called "Go", his aptly-named follow-up, "Shiver", is a bleak, uncomfortable affair. While we can't blame Jónsi for wanting to try something new with his sound, "Shiver" is discordant to the point of unrelenting, working heavily with PC Music figurehead A.G. Cook to craft a car crash of a record. Having Robyn sing over blown-speaker beats and bell sounds on "Salt Licorice" is one thing, but the stretched and tortured voice on "Beautiful Boy", drawn out to a full four minutes, is memorable for all the wrong reasons. There's assuredly room in this world for a darker Jónsi persona, but we "Shiver" at the thought of him making more material like this.

This one really stings. It had been five years since the last Sufjan album proper (2015's heartwrenching "Carrie & Lowell"), and a full decade since he went full electro with his misunderstood introverted masterpiece "The Age of Adz". So with signs that Sufjan was returning to his synthy obsessions with "The Ascension", people got excited, thinking they were going to get a warped pop rendition of his distinct brand of lyrical bloodletting. Sadly, "The Ascension", while a good record, still feels slight. Tracks like the decorated "Ursa Major", terrifyingly repetitive (in a good way "Die Happy", and propulsive "Lamentations" point to the great record this could've been, but the loopy "Video Game" and the self-referential title track are melodically rote, repeating simple keyboard phrases without much variance and padding out their run time on a record that already runs 80 minutes. In short, it's not as progressive as some fans wanted nor is it as cathartic as others were expecting. It's a fine entry in his discography, but a lesser one to be sure.

André Allen Anjos' RAC moniker is far from a household name, but the Portugal-born remixer has proven to have quite the ear for what makes a dynamite pop hook, jumping out the gate with danceable remixes to video game themes before gradually moving into a traditional pop space. Radio hits have so far eluded him, but his 2014 record "Strangers" proved to be a giddy confection of shiny upbeat and mid-tempo dance numbers, collaborating with many rising indie luminaries like songwriter Matthew Koma and Bloc Party's Kele Okereke. Now, with RAC's third full-length "Boy", Anjos has lost all sense of what made his music so interesting and colorful to begin with. Understated to the point of being drab, not a single song on "Boy" stands out, as everything blends together in the way that all the watercolors turn into a muddy brown when you mix them together. Even cameo spots from electro stars like Louis The Child and Jamie Lidell barely make an impact, as Anjos newfound stripped-down pop minimalism frustrates at every corner. It truly is a marvel that someone can put out an 18-track, collaboration-filled record that has zero discernible highlights. Wherever Anjos' muse ran off to, he better do all he can to find it again.

Prior to "The Slow Rush", every Tame Impala record was met with unfettered critical adoration, but 2015's "Currents" pushed frontman Kevin Parker into the mainstream, winning Grammy Awards and going platinum while acts like Rihanna sampled his songs wholesale. Before long, Parker ended up becoming quite the in-demand songwriter and producer, working with everyone from Lady Gaga to Kanye West to The Weeknd. Although he was a psychedelic rocker at heart, the last few years have seen the rise of Parker's pop chops. He's honed this skill so intensely, in fact, that he couldn't help bring a good deal of his professional pop prowess to "The Slow Rush", his fourth Tame Impala album proper. While the production for all of these new songs is appropriately grainy and "swirly," Pop Parker is very much in control, leaving his rock and psych instincts on the backburner. By the time "Posthumous Forgiveness" breaks out into a modular synth break, Parker barely plays with it, just repeating a few basic notes as the toms come thudding in. While Tame Impala fans were certainly expecting a bit more of a "mainstream sheen" on a new record given who he's been working with, they weren't expecting Parker to lean this hard into traditional structures. It's still a lively and colorful record, but it's starting to feel like the fun and deeply strange psych that helped launch him into stardom is perhaps more of an afterthought these days.

At this point, we know what a Future album is going to sound like: midtempo trap beats, Future's characteristically hazed-out flow, and a lurid atmosphere dominating the whole affair. "High Off Life" has proved to be a hit -- aided by his massive Drake-assisted single "Life is Good" -- but end-to-end, "High Off Life" is amazingly lifeless, bringing back tropes and themes that Future has rapped about many, many times before. Future sometimes just sounds tired, as on "Touch the Sky", where he drops bland braggadocio with lines like "I'm on a whole 'nother wave / I'm surfin' in a new Ferrari" that lack the imaginative punch of his best works. There's a been-there-heard-that air to "High Off Life", but on the few times that he actually slows the tempo down (like on "Trillionaire" with Youngboy Never Broke Again), things actually get interesting. Never one to rest on a project for too long, he dropped a full-length collaborative record with Lil Uzi Vert (a guest here) just a few months later, but as is becoming increasingly clear with Future, he's only interested in his latest project for so long before moving on to the next one. In his mind, "High Off Life" already happened and he's done with it. After listening to it, we're done with it too.

Alanis Morissette had quite the eventful 2020, appearing on Halsey's new album and doing an anniversary tour of her legendary rock classic "Jagged Little Pill" which unfortunately was cut very short due to the global quarantines that resulted from the coronavirus pandemic. While the stage musical version of "Jagged Little Pill" picked up a bevy of Tony Award nominations in 2020, it was Alanis' album of new material, "Such Pretty Forks in the Road", that got the least attention of all. Her first record in over two decades to not debut in the Top 10 or spin off any charting singles, "Forks" is the sound of a mature, mellowed out Morissette. Full of familial warmth ("Ablaze"), biography ("Reasons I Drink"), and sex ("Sandbox Love"), Morissette remains an incisive writer, but her songs are lacking the musical punch and grit that's defined even her best post-"Jagged" work. Records like "So-Called Chaos" proved that she didn't need breakups to power her most compelling material, but "Forks" is the sight of a different Morissette entirely. It's a sweet record, but it is, sadly, a lesser entry into what is already a shining discography.

Everything you need to know about Machine Gun Kelly's semi-sudden turn from rap to straight-up mall-punk can be found on the (sigh) "Sold Out Deluxe Edition" of "Tickets to My Downfall", wherein he breaks out a cover of Paramore's "Misery Business". It is pure "Kidz Bop"-level cosplay, and that is by and large what "Tickets to My Downfall" is: Kelly giving himself a chance to be Blink-182 (which also explains by Blink's drummer Travis Barker is the producer of this whole affair). With guest vocals from the likes of Halsey and Blackbear -- and spoken-word interludes from the likes of Megan Fox and Pete Davidson -- "Tickets" is a truly compelling mess of a record, sounding exactly like the alt-rock era it was inspired by while adding absolutely no new elements to the proceedings. Kelly is still figuring what he wants to do with his career, collecting genuine acting gigs in films like "The Dirt" and "Project Power", but despite his famed beef with Eminem helping shoot him to fame two years ago, "Tickets" is nonetheless his first chart-topping full-length. Whatever nostalgia trip he's on, there's a lot of people who want to join him. More power to him; let's just hope such obvious fan worship leads to a better album next time.

Who would've guessed that in the year that The National's Matt Berninger went solo, it was his bandmate Aaron Dessner who shot to stardom, largely due to Dessner's production and songwriting work on Taylor Swift's acclaimed 2020 album "folklore". Berninger's record, "Serpentine Prison", was produced by Booker T. Jones (of Booker T. & the MG's), and has the kind of cryptic shuffleboard lyrics we've come to expect from him (see: "My tongue's a bible in the drawer of a desk / Leave it alone please, give it a rest"). The only problem is that without the rhythmic muscle of his National brethren, the acoustic-guitar/piano/light drum kit combo that colors so much of this "Prison" production gives Berninger's songs an airy weightlessness that threatens to blow away at a moment's notice. It is a surprisingly unassuming record, and for that reason, Berninger's poetry hangs in the air as question marks; confusing word strings that lack the drama his band normally brings (just wait until you get to "I'll tell you everything whenever you want / In the vanishing geometry of fire"). There may be a solid and memorable Berninger solo outing somewhere down the line, but "Serpentine Prison" ain't it.