Despite the leaps and bounds that this effort makes songwriting wise, it just feels less unique than it did before.

For all its spookiness, Confrontations is ultimately a pleasant listen that goes down easy and doesn’t leave much of a impression.

The eclectic Portland, Oregon based quintet's 6th studio album is a return to form following last year's Destroyer of the Void, which, despite showcasing Blitzen Trapper's refined instrumental chops, came off as flat, derivative, and fatally overproduced.

Monthly Friend is serviceable indie rock at best, but it’s hard to meet it with anything greater than apathy and indifference.

Raven in the Grave isn't significantly weaker than any of it's predecessors, it's flaws are just significantly more obvious.

Digital Roses Don’t Die is a subtle, occasionally lightweight, jaunt through the realms of K.R.I.T.’s affections and motivations.

Tapes 'n Tapes will probably never again manage to capture the youthful, devil-may-care magic of The Loon--those times are passed. But Outside, with its handful of pretty fantastic tracks, shows positive signs that this band may not be the victim of early success that it once seemed destined to be.

My Head is an Animal is a highly impressive debut that's full of emotional lyrics, lush, diverse instrumentation, and a powerful and dynamic male/female vocals.

Aside from a few inconsistencies, the change in sound is quite revitalizing and proves that there is more to Royal Bangs than a serious case of musical ADD.

Early Birds paints a picture of how the band were operating before they got around to releasing their debut, showing that they were just as interested in being silly and experimental as they are today.

In an era that occasionally feels oversaturated with hyper-pop, demon time is never too frenetic for its own good. It’s short, but these songs groove.

It's an album that alternates between being rewarding and punishing.

There's nothing wrong with seeking to accomplish the same things your heroes did, but when a band tries only to imitate a few aspects–in this case, detached singing, jangly guitar interplay, and lyrics about teen angst–without offering many of the other aspects that made that band great–like clever storytelling and interesting perspectives--it's always going to fall short. Which Come Of Age does.

With repeated listens, even the least of the songs still reach for that relaxing, carefree Best Coast vibe, but the feeling takes more work to achieve compared to the immediately lovable, attention-demanding nature of their entirely natural, easy-as-pie debut.

Pedestrian may have similar mechanics to Yuck’s highlights underneath, but it’s stripped that fuzzy distortion and slathered in a thick layer of schmaltz as a replacement. The end result is a struggle, one that’s scattershot due to it’s need to include now-ancient methods to survive.

They haven't quite found it yet, but Esben and the Witch have the potential for an arresting and momentous album in them.

Sure, there is not a bad tune in the bunch, but the problem is that there isn't a particularly good one here, either.

While it's not as subtle or as elegantly constructed as Beast Rest Forth Mouth, this record has a kineticism and momentum that Beast lacked.

Despite the thimble of predictability or aural similarity, Wahlfeldt has accomplished in Crusher an interesting take on familiar sounds. It’s too fuzzed out to just be post-punk, too sparse to just be a home-recorded take on his alt-rock idol.

To put it simply, Is This Hyperreal? suffers not because the band made a bad album, but because this is the fourth time they've repeated the formula.

Soft Metals shows a ton of potential, and each track is polished with care, but it is hard to overcome the album's mostly simple pattern.

There’s something to be said for burning bright and fast, but with the limp arrival of Y2K! it seems this room went dark long before we were able to leave the party.

Yeah Right’s dual interests in songwriting and guitar explorations end up being its greatest strength.

Ultimately, Mylo Xyloto feels like a mixed bag of ideas that never really comes together.

The end results are still pleasant enough, but can wear thin, even just after five songs.

All in all, Two-Way Mirror is a good but flawed album, with plenty of things to excite, but a few things that can disappoint.

It's shiny but fluffy, and sure to be a disappointment to those hoping that O'Regan could build on the promise of Special Affectations.

Banks is showing some desire to move beyond the design that his career has sustained itself on, but this album shows he's not quite ready to cut the cord.

All things considered, this EP seems to be breeding ground for experimentation and possibly be what's to come from a second LP.

If you can forgive Barnes' very unfortunate excursions into hip-hop and overlook what is hopefully the last few Georgie Fruit guest spots, you'll be amazed at the range of sounds that the band manages to successfully explore here.

New Epoch, Goth-Trad has adopted a patience, openness and attention to detail that feels indebted to the more intricacy-focused realms of bass music and techno, but retains the sweaty, oxidized exhalations of muscled jungle rhythms.

The moments of brightness--some poetry here, a brief pop moment there--will get most listeners through the album, but won't inspire them to keep coming back.

Different Gear, Still Speeding shows that the band is comfortable with themselves and their follow-up has every chance to be a stronger album – especially if they are brave enough to include more styles, even if they won't move beyond their British Invasion inspirations.

They need to find their identity, and they're going to have to move forward and progress even further as a group if they want to move beyond being a flavor of the month.

The Rapture show that they are as worthy of pupils as they have been for the last decade as teachers. But, unfortunately, they still have a lot to learn.

As much as Mice Parade’s previous releases seemed to be insular statements, Candela is simply stretched too thin, with too little of Pierce himself in the music.

The creative choices to splice, juxtapose and mess with the song structures that don’t work are conscious ones driven by the same tenacity that shapes the best songs of Join Hands, so the band is not misguided in trying them – overexcited would be more accurate.

Side B is not a total miss though, nor even a miss at all. Once Mathers stumbles through this opening salvo and the awkward bits of “Tone Deaf”, the album settles into a comfortable space, and even becomes enjoyable.

If Wilson and crew are trying to invoke a riot, then Easy Eighth isn’t the best manifesto – but it does at least fill the time fine enough until they figure out their cause.

An ambitious concept, but not fully executed, Top Ten Hits Of The End Of The World is stuck somewhere in-between.

It does sound a lot like oOoOO and under scrutiny with A-B comparisons, Our Loving Is Hurting Us is pretty starkly more of the same.

The album as a whole isn't flawless, yet by sounding utterly enchanting during its climax it leaves a listener feeling genuinely touched. From a such legendary band, you could ask for nothing more.

It's when I keep in mind the idea of Pull It Together being an album for her daughter that I enjoy the album most, as it's in this light that it sounds at its most charming and likeable.

The music on This Is Another Life isn’t the kind that boasts colour, or even deep and dark hues, but rather is full of big strokes of dull greys.

Off the Record, despite a few promising tracks, never provides a strong enough reason for listeners to do anything but go back and admire what he accomplished with Kraftwerk.

Neither cold enough to make a disquieting impression nor warm enough to connect with the listener the way the artist’s own A Strangely Isolated Place or, hell, Amber did.

Let us hope this isn't a flash-in-the-pan success and that subsequent releases are just as good.

I'd say that MDNA is at the very least "not bad," but frankly, it's worse than bad: it's mediocre.

This is one of those albums to throw on and leave on while you accomplish something: it won't demand too much of your attention, but none of it will bore you.

As it stands, Beak & Claw gets an A for effort but considerably lower marks for execution.

So while it displays a more mature and focused sound for The Drums, the album eventually crumbles beneath the weight of its influential stilts.

The textures are jagged and distorted, the lyrics are mostly nonsensical and feel spontaneously captured, and the whole thing sounds like an awkward genre-fusing experiment that doesn’t feel like it warrants its own noted release. That’s not to say there aren’t moments with elements to enjoy, if not just moments with potential.

Despite a couple speed bumps, Dross Glop is as solid of a collaborative remix album as you're going to find.

In The Cool Of The Day sounds like an intimate affair, like Moore has called up his friends and invited them over to the studio upon finding the Steinway piano.

Although this may be a relative disappointment it should not be looked at as the start of a decline, but merely a curiosity in the collection.

These six instrumentals are pleasant if not pretty in the usual way an Andrew Bird instrumental track might be.

Where at their best, Gardens & Villa may recall the harmonies of Local Natives and the hazy qualities of The Walkmen, they are clearly not (yet) at the level of either of those bands.

With Feed The Beast she has neither progressed past that nor become a lost cause.

He has this impeccable talent when it comes to picking the right sounds to liquidize his voice, even if that tends to muddy what he’s actually singing. It’s a shame that this time around Greene wants to distance himself from his two best records and early EPs, but Purple Noon is nonetheless an improvement over Mister Mellow because it brings most of what we enjoyed about his early work back – even if it’s not as heavily emphasized.

It’s surprisingly how unaffecting and mediocre most of it is.

No, it doesn’t match the divine polish or emotional architecture of Ray of Light – few records ever have. But that’s not the point. This album isn’t about rewriting history; it’s about finishing a sentence left hanging for 25 years.

All in all, the album is an above average collection for a band well past their expected use-by date; and with new blood injected into them, a world tour booked, and promises that they'll continue writing on tour, they don't seem to be stopping any time soon. This could be the beginning for a highly successful era of the band.

If anything, A Very She & Him Christmas can feel like a wet blanket at times, like a party that just can't get off the ground.

The Mother Stone is a stroke of real promise. With its harrowing peaks of dramatized catharsis and musical excursions that recall rock greats – yet look deep into a dark and obscure abyss – Jones’ record keeps audiences at the edges of their seats. If he can be reeled in to gather his thoughts more concisely, the sky is the limit.

Washed Out’s fifth album is a genuinely engrossing return to form, filled with memorable songs and flawless craftsmanship. A soundtrack for growing out of the past, and into the future.

There is a disappointing flatness to the songwriting, the performances and the general drive of the record. It is the sound of a band going through the motions, scared to make much of a show of themselves for fear of making a mistake.

There's potential here but it's sadly unrealized.

This kid may not have the voice of a generation, but there's certainly a demographic he could mean the world to. Once he figures out that it's what he has to say that should guide his singles, rather than what he imagines we want to hear, there may well be a great artist in Yelawolf.

Thematic speculation aside Green has managed, more simply to write a compelling collection of guitar pop songs.

If they stick to the melodic folk at the core of their best songs, that fateful open-mic night could be the beginning of something really great.

What this results in is an album that is just as frequently successful as it is frustrating.

Sure, they may borderline on gimmick at times, but Born To Die has its own sound, and that is more than we can say about a lot of music that is presently being released.

Mumps takes a little while to sink in in a different way to previous albums.

Though Mr. Impossible is their most accessible work to date, it's still unmistakably Black Dice.

Rave Age is an awkward half-step in a couple directions for Vitalic. It's texturally half-baked and predictable.

Though freer than the critically acclaimed Ungodly Hour, it is also less focused. Her performance rises to greater heights, but her music doesn’t always rise with her. Still, it is a work laden with potential.

Blessed with an old-fashioned FM radio charm, Here is a worthy follow-up.

Barnes has definitely taken a step in right direction.

Go With Me is like a big box of popcorn; it's tasty and it can be improved by the circumstances under which you're enjoying it, but by the end you're barely even tasting it anymore, and it certainly won't quell your appetite for a proper meal.

The record sounds tired, dreamy, and wasted in the daylight at five in the afternoon– it tries to be breezy, but instead still feels like 99 degrees of heat.

The electronic approach doesn’t work for every song, and a little more humanity and ambience would have been charming, but the appeal of the whole grows as nuances reveal themselves with repeated listens.

With this mixed bag he's likely cemented his reputation as a MC that was blessed with a sack of classic beats for his debut, now just a rapper like the rest of 'em.

Apart from the aptly titled "Film Credits," which, worthily, plays much like a ode to Max Richter, the music on the remainder of the album is left to unsatisfying and grey piano suites that don't sound destined for a more open setting nor benefit from the intimate setting of Arnalds' own living room.

Considering this is her first album since 2014, it’s unfortunate that it can feel a little one-note. A Romeo and Juliet-esque yearning wasn’t necessarily expected or desired, and it doesn’t always serve her best across this effort.

It just runs over half an hour, but time slips away when you’re inside it, wandering about.

Consistently being an upbeat adult isn't exactly an easy thing to do and at least here the band show that they can mature without having to completely forget who they once were.

Ripe for radio play it may never see, Spine Hits is a neutral but enjoyable record for the impending days of sun and so-what.

The vast majority of Dark Lane could play in a suburban Baskin Robbins without offending a single soccer mom. Honestly, they’d be unlikely to even notice it was playing. The few songs that would have moms asking to speak to the manager – which are by and large the project’s better offerings – feel more cribbed from younger artists’ playbooks than ever for the Toronto king’s rapidly aging brand.

Instead of going out with a nuclear bang, Megadeth serves lean sides that won’t clog the final tour’s setlists.

All Of Us, Together isn't an attempt to disown his early work and roots. Jamison just made the record he felt like making, and that's why it so easily matches his best material.

There are good ideas scattered about on the record, but when you have to pass through several minutes of cacophonous effects and layers of sound, it can get a little exhausting.

The version the band have made is still a solid, if not rather good, Kaiser Chiefs album. [Review of UK release The Future Is Medieval]

Future This is stuck in some kind of awful, awful limbo between Robert Smith-less Cure and hyperbolic electro dance music.

As said, the songs benefit from being taken out of context and as much as that leads to just picking and choosing the moments worth going back for, the process of listening to the EP as a whole can almost be disheartening as much as it is unrewarding.

Unless you really enjoy music in commercials, you should avoid this disc.

Descriptors are hardly necessary for any of these songs because they're all a stone's toss from one another in pretty much every respect.

They start off well, though, with a trio of solid tracks.... The remaining tracks on the album are equally inoffensive, but they don't have the same half-minded unassuming appeal to help them glide along, and too often there's one too many head-in-your-hands cheesy lines thrown in.

Detractors have long said that Harris’ music is tailor made for background summer playlists you can ignore – listening to this project, it’s hard to disagree.