On Your Favorite Toy, it's all loud and all fast all the time. (One notable exception is "If You Only Knew," a relatively straightforward rock song that nonetheless stands out thanks to an excellent hook.) Compounding this problem is the fact that Grohl remains a frustratingly boring lyricist.

There are moments on Long Long Road where Burnett almost makes his case: the rollicking "Baby Don't Go" is endearing, and Ringo is especially having fun on line dance-ready "Why." Much like Brian Wilson's feature-heavy No Pier Pressure, however, Starr mostly feels like a guest on his own album.

Much of what set WU LYF apart from other UK pop-rockers has been dulled to match their ambitions and ages. It's maximalist minimalism (or is that minimalist maximalism?) at its most heartfelt and bland, similar to other heartsick stadium "rockers" like Coldplay and Imagine Dragons.

The Mountain does not reach the same heights as the one called Monkey at the end of Demon Days, nor does it have the same sonic depth as Plastic Beach. However, it does continues in the path of both of those albums.

There are undeniable flashes of peak Joji scattered throughout the album, which only heightens the frustration. They serve as reminders of his ability to be great, confirming the unevenness as less of a lack of talent and more of an excess of underdeveloped ideas.

It comes as no surprise then that Megadeth, like so many of those latter-day albums, is an uneven affair, front-loaded with its best material in the time-honoured tradition — but when it's good, it's good.

Despite a greater variance in beat drops and textural flourishes (that way the drum machine fades into the post-chorus saxophone is the only redeemable thing about "Honey"), the middling mid-tempo The Life of a Showgirl strays even further from the magic Swift's pen once wielded.

Geese build up to the album's conclusion: a charged and accelerating train ride, 16 stops from Brooklyn into the darkest parts of "Long Island City Here I Come," Winter issuing poetic threats that crosswire Bob Dylan and Van Morrison into a barroom bible-mishmash scored by screaming guitars. It's a thrilling exit point, full of ecstasy and menace, but it still feels a little like dress-up rather than lived-in.

While it provides plenty of tell, there's not nearly enough show.

While it may not reach the heights of Acid Rap or Coloring Book, it doesn't feel as far removed — and, in some moments, indicates that those heights are still within reach.

Something Beautiful does, of course, sound beautiful — Shawn Everett's production is widescreen and larger than life, but still remembers to dial things back when needed, although maybe not always quite enough (Cyrus is an impressive balladeer! "The Climb" was a moment!) — but it also rings hollow.

Difficult to dislike. The knowing wink may feel a bit strained as the crow's feet deepen, but it will coax your face into a smile more often than not.

A mostly forgettable but sometimes good album.

The resultant album is cohesive, but slightly tiring; bogged down in ballad after ballad, all draped with the Weeknd's pretty but repetitive vibrato falsetto.

At its best, the album delivers contemporary counterparts to feminist folk classics, but the good moments are often rushed through for seemingly no purpose.

Guided Tour is not a bad record, but it's not a particularly memorable one. It features some excellent work by a powerful band ("Mind's a Lie" is possibly the best thing they've ever committed to record), while also forcing the listener to sit through some truly bland, unoriginal filler.

A pleasant float into the blue of Allison's mind. It's a safe and comfortable journey, but you might find yourself dreaming of bigger adventures.

The first half of the album is presented with the clean and stripped down grain of early Karate songs, but the feel is less their trademark over-caffeinated tension and more suburban dad that used to be in punk bands jamming to Thin Lizzy songs with his buddies in the car port. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not very remarkable either.

The songs on Cutouts feel jammy and jazzy, and while the trio are of course experts at their craft, the instrumentation tends to meander.

Y2K! certainly isn't a disaster, but it's decidedly inessential, providing some new material for fans of her early singles without revealing any new tricks.

Glover is clearly better than he's ever been in almost every regard; his rapping, singing and everything in between feel refined to a point they never have. The issue is that, without the movie, there's no connective tissue between these songs, as great as the majority are. For now, Bando Stone & the New World exists as a collection of songs that are mostly great, but lack any real sense of cohesion between them.

Inoffensive music Iike this is an affront to the very idea of what makes music so worthy of obsession and analysis. It's the antithesis of self-expression; this ain't no victimless crime. For the first time, I understand the term: this is pure co-worker music.

C,XOXO isn't a bad album, particularly when stacked against the imagined disaster it could've been. The problem is that it sounds like it's been purchased from other talents rather than being curated and homegrown by Cabello and her team. You gotta hand it to her for trying though, even more so for the fact that it nearly, just nearly, works.

Strut of Kings requires more than just a first go-through, as much of the album could have benefitted from moving past the "first thought, best thought" rubric. Although it seems crazy to say, this is an actual Guided by Voices album that could have benefitted from an editor.

When Love Heart breaks the feedback loop of its own foundational creation is where the record is at its most compelling.

The record's first two-thirds are very well-paced, from bashfully stoned ballads to instrumental to extended Floydian romp. It makes it all the stranger to see the album fall apart toward the end, where indistinct sanguine ballads are sent to die.

Although the band clearly wears its assorted influences proudly on their collective sleeve, this diverse approach can sometimes hinder progress, resulting in some songs that are vibrant, complex and uniquely Cola, while relegating others to the derivative badlands.

Wallows play it safe on Model, with a lack of distinctive storytelling shackling the album to its mid-tempo pop melodies, its highs too few and far between.