Like many collaborations, the material on Stoney Jackson is varied and can feel rudderless at moments.

As an album, Ride Your Heart seems less like a collection of songs and more like a collection of expertly selected Tumblr-ready rock ‘n’ roll signifiers.

The Narrow Garden is, at times, polite to a fault, its sensual romance lacking visceral urgency.

Now, they're just going through the motions.

The long, extended space-outs similarly have their moments both good and bad.

If you're in the mood, the repeating riffs may fit right in; if you're not, you'll grow weary midway through each song.

Unexpected Guests, his collection of B-sides and easy-to-miss cameos, is unsatisfying because it doesn’t offer the space that Doom needs to build his narratives.

[The production] intrudes on the songwriting, distracts the listener, and interferes with what are otherwise solid and sometimes deeply moving performances.

The musicianship, melodies, and performances are sound, but hollow. Everything does what it's supposed to do, without ever fully engaging on any real emotional, human level.

It doesn’t help that the production is full of weird echoes and indistinctness.... And yet, there are some genuinely good songs here.

In between [“Very Large Green Triangles” and "Aesthetic Vehicle"], some of these tunes feel a little bit generic; those tracks have notable features, but they don’t seem to do anything that’s all that different from other Matmos albums.

Side one of MCIII consists of perfectly enjoyable songs, with similar ingredients--piano, interesting guitar work, a voice reminiscent of ‘60s pop, but that ineffable thing that makes songs stick in your head just doesn’t seem to be here.... The second half of the album is problematic in a different way.

It remains to be seen whether Nomad reveals Bombino to be an artist of limited means or one who is making the occasional misstep on the way to something great.

Things begin promisingly with “She Never Could Resist a Winding Road” and “Beatnik Walking,” two nimbly played songs on which Thompson and his band get to show off their chops without showing off.... Unfortunately, that fact [a relatively small band playing together on relatively little time] begins to show for the worse on "Patty Don’t You Put Me Down."

When Life… is not all bad, however. It is merely middling.

For a band who made their name on straightforward, meat-and-potatoes indie pop, Strapped is all over the place.

Jackson’s debut album is not always a success, as Smash’s panoptic detail eventually turns homogeneous.

Field Music can certainly use each song’s inherent tension to keep each song coherent, but over two album’s worth of music, that tension is diluted, and the songs tend to run into each other.

There is beauty on Nepenthe, but it’s altogether too clean and self-regarding to pack much of a punch.

Just as Dedication surprised many listeners by aptly navigating theme, mood and flow, Nothing demonstrates Zomby knows his foundational sounds, the everything upon which he builds, better than anyone.

Habits & Contradictions is less like a label-released full-length and more like an amateurish mixtape, a work in progress.

Musically it feels like business as usual, but there’s a spark missing, as if the events of the last few years have pummelled the life out of the band, resulting in a frustratingly uneven record.

Frustratingly uneven album: hang in there, ride out the bumpy passages, and something lovely is likely to happen; until those moments pop up, expect to have your patience tested.

For all its veneer of accessible pop, I Love You, It's Cool is too often bereft of good old-fashioned melody--still too often adrift in the clouds of instrumentation,

This Enon is leaner and more straight-forward--but also more one-dimensional.

As is often the case, the idea of this partnership ends up being better than the result.

Trying to meet somewhere between the dancefloor and the bedroom, between the realm of communal delight and solitary reflection, Booka Shade just wind up in the middle of the road.

While there are plenty of thrilling moments, Dungen Live feels less like a coherent journey and more like channel-surfing between chase sequences and zoned-out psychedelic visuals, steam corkscrewing out of the top of the TV. Each of these flights of fancy probably made perfect sense at the time, as instrumental interludes between the songs, but recontextualizing them in this way has made the playing feel somewhat aimless at times.