Perhaps what’s most frustrating about these missteps is that their combination with the album’s brief length (at least 10 minutes shorter than their previous efforts) smacks of songwriting torpor.

The Gents waltz their way through these ten sturdy, mid-tempo numbers rarely striking a bum note.

Typically heavy subject matter aside, Mason actually seems more content in his skin than he has in some time, and anyone who has previously garnered enjoyment from the Beta Band or King Biscuit Time will unquestionably find something to dig within Boys Outside.

De La Soul [are] wise enough to keep the filler to a minimum, thus presenting a more consistent product than that offered by their followers/peers.

It’s a counterfactual, of course, but I’ve got to think that Monsters of Folk circa 2005 would have come up with something a bit more substantive than this.

Leave Home is manna for white noise aficionados and anyone who thought the last Future of the Left record was far too tempered (yeah that's right). The Men have done a good thing here.

Heaven is more like a classic Sunday morning album: a modest, extremely laid back paean to the comforts of domesticity in which every song sounds like it was recorded from a rocking chair.

Despite having ties to shitgaze, this isn’t a record obsessed with that aesthetic, and this works to its advantage, since these songs clearly aspire to be bigger than that and have very real potential to be.

Interestingly, the very qualities that make this a subpar Radiohead album are what make it their most experimental record yet. But this is also Radiohead elliptically circling back on themselves in dramatic form.

Run Fast has many moments of darkness, but ultimately it’s a celebration: of growing up, of surviving, of wading through shit and coming out the other side.

Arrivals is just about a palatable enough affair; a minor stretch at sixty-two minutes but with enough peaks to be eaten in three sittings or so.

Mostly, what made Blackalicious’s last two proper albums so engaging was how Gab chose to reel in the tentacles of his glossolalia, and what makes The Craft such a disappointment is how he forgets that restraint, instead opting to crowd the tracks with ceaseless, pretentious sound.

The Wonder Show of the World, his eleventh release in half as many years, is everything for which we hope in a new Bonnie "Prince" Billy release: creeping yet expansive alt-folk; an ever-strengthening voice; erotic imagery ("The smell of your box on my mustache") paired with thoughts on family, never uncomfortably; a stark, doodled cover; a doting collaboration.

Where [Fantastic Damage] assured its legacy through sheer density, piling beats on top of one another haphazardly and layering hype tracks laced with punchlines, subtexts, and asides, Sleep finds El-P focusing his fury into individual crescendos, particularly during the record’s sterling second half.

Visions is exactly what it sounds like: it's an aesthetic and conceptual vision, one utterly unique to Boucher, and it's both strange and satisfying.

On the Water is too uncompromising, too disinterested in being for anyone outside of its circle of two.

The problem is that Vanderslice’s lyrical scope remains too broad to enable a cohesive or definitive conceptual statement, and his music too tightly defined and predictable to be considered a departure.

Gather, Form & Fly is a bright record full of energy and dynamism even in its most cacophonous sound collages, but what’s so frustrating--what becomes more urgent with every listen--is how great this album could have been.

Curren$y drops some of the meanest s*** he's ever done, giving real credence to his attempt to crawl out of his obvious niche.

They have it in them to write great pop music or truly important experimental music, but Dirty Projectors have to decide where they want to end up before they start.

Happy New Year is fresh and adventurous and, most important, it is consistently so.

This is a fans-only document, but it’s one of roaring, immutable spirit.

Rising Down is pretty much same old same old.

Price’s work behind the boards, while often commanding, is hardly ambitious; running the tracks together to try and give Madge the "album" sound is noteworthy, but he’s picked the wrong pop-star to prod.

Vaguely melodious, embedded with overtones, sometimes placid and sometimes stormy, Black Sea is like a wave in that its diverse parts meld together to form a powerful, all-encompassing entity.

He establishes grand lyrical arches, overworked symbols, and Deep Meaning. Problem is, he forgets any of the emotion, realism, or originality that would make anyone care.

A nearly perfect follow-up... [it] keeps intact Interpol’s singular melodic prowess, while both tightening its songwriting and making unpredictable shifts in instrumental emphasis.

Azeda Booth achieve with their style one of the best and most exciting grafts yet of pop with electronica.