Moving in a lot of directions, That Delicious Vice proves that Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds are willing to experiment with sound and scope to deliver their tunes, even if not all their outings are successful.

Like all of the band’s reunion releases, The Night The Zombies Came is a mixed bag overall. Some heavier offerings, slightly off-kilter rock, acoustic strums, and larger sounds add to the musical range. It ends up as a serviceable rock record that never sniffs the heights of their early career classic output.

Everything from future horror movie soundtracks, to thrash blasts of rage, to smoky 70’s fuzz flows out of Arrows and while the overall result is a bit hit or miss, Red Fang returns back to their sweet spot; recording together for the simple love of playing heavy music.

On the band’s newest release, Open Door Policy, The Hold Steady moves to fully incorporate Finn’s more muted solo offerings, and the result is a disjointed transitional work.

Lyrically Batiste plays it middle of the road, not to offend, and at times that hollowness can seem like a bad parody. ... That title, World Music Radio, pledges a larger scope of sound which Batiste is certainly capable of incorporating, but too often different genres get a quick cameo before Batiste goes back to the dance-ready pop tracks.

A move to a more polished sound was desired and clearly achieved, yet tracks like “Moment of Joy” and “The Way” both seem to suffer from this newer clean style. “Moment of Joy” lyrically yearns to break out of its mellow musical world while “The Way” simply has too many ideas getting crammed into one song.

At its best, the music accentuates the songs’ difficult subject matter. At other times, it becomes monotonous, with the immersive layers distracting and turning into a wash of indistinguishable noise.

It is in the opener and closer where perhaps the most interesting experiments lie. Cobb opens with “Beyond Measure (Piano),” a solo piano number that sounds almost demo-like and starts the album on odd footing, but the closing “Beyond Measure (Fixin’s)” brings the whole band back to the track. Perhaps combining those two efforts in Neil Young-like fashion could find a successful middle ground between Cobb’s rock and Americana urges.

Lyrically, this is mixed but has its strong points. Few write with his kind of insight. Yet, musically it fails to generate enough sparks with most of the songs stuck in similar mid-tempo modes. The true ballads are strong.

Radiate Like This floats along in the vein of 2016’s Heads Up as the former art-rockers wander in semi-aimless, sleepy pop waters. Warpaint’s dreamy vibe is pleasant, starting with the ambient-looking cover art, but it doesn’t leave any real lasting impact.

Burnett is not a fan of technology, modern trends, or much of anything in general in the despondent middle offering of his trilogy. As a result, The Invisible Light: Spells oozes a murky uneasiness that floats throughout the album.

It’s also overly self-serious, an album begging to be considered above its pretentions and to be analyzed as art. For the most part, it works. It works as a piece of baroque chamber art and it works like a flip side to Hercules & Love Affair, a testament to the pair’s virtuosity. Still, it’s frustrating that with so many talented musicians collaborating on this project, it can feel like a missed opportunity.

Overall Fear of the Dawn (like White himself) never sits still and while exhilarating at moments, none of the tracks stand with the best he has written and feel like experimental jam sessions.

On (watch my moves) Kurt Vile lets his wooly freak flag fly, never reigning in his scattered thoughts and never rocking out, content to just drift along in his unique way.

The end result works better in some spots than others, “Lights Out” feels like the artists tossed everything they possibly could into the mix and the overload/instant shift in styles is a bit much while “The Art of Losing” featuring Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux )is torn between traditional song structure and free for all, never truly coalescing around either.

The slow tempos are fine in doses but that novelty wears off quickly. More variations in tempo would likely work better. When we get to the closer “It’s All in the Game” it just seems that Rickie Lee is stuck in that molasses-like groove. She’s intent on being a torch singer and she’s damn good at it although it takes plenty of hutzpah to take on the Great American Songbook.

As a whole, WE is a fairly good album and would be better received if it wasn’t an Arcade Fire album.

While there are some great tracks on Why You So Crazy, the album as a whole feels disconnected. The mix of so many different styles makes it seem as though this is almost an album full of B-sides and scrapped material from the past two decades. However, standout tracks like, “Terraform”, “Be Alright” and “Forever” are bound to make great additions to the band’s already stellar live shows and are destined to become fan favorites.

This new one smolders but never truly catches fire. Perhaps as a measure of the emotional disarray in which Young found himself at the time—he sounds almost as distracted at times as on that Seventies LP delayed some forty-five years–he couldn’t really cut loose, even in the comfortable company of Crazy Horse.

The resulting unwieldy quadruple album manages to be overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time.

A tense, polished, cold affair that never truly explodes into something larger.

Unfortunately, the biggest misses are at the heart of the album, as the over-long and manic “Pink Lunettes” is crazed from a bad drug trip or just 18 months cooped up, pin-balling around searching for meaning with grating lyrics. ... The finale recalls the opener with a swirling mix of electro, longing, and strings, pedal-affected guitars and keyboards, doing an admirable job recalling the best of Pink Floyd but skewed through a modern filter, bookending the shaky 9 on an exhilarating note.

The easy rhymes so obvious in “Smile” end the album as it began, on a relatively placid note that unfortunately doesn’t change much over the course of the eleven cuts. As a result, this album title may refer to the disparity between potential and achievement on the part of Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real.

As a bleak artistic shift from his folksier Americana, the album is a complete product, just not a very engaging one. Todd Snider seems to be in transition with this record.

As a whole Screen Time is a curious listen/mood piece, the outings are all semi-interesting but (like the album as a whole) remain one note in tone, leaving a minimal visceral imprint. Screen Time’s sketches and atonal guitar jazz wanderings have moments, just not enough, however, with Moore, all guitar phases and releases are worth checking in on.

There’s attitude aplenty from the very outset. In fact, its first track, “Shockwave,” contains the clarion call of electric guitars combined with bluesy harp, at least partially giving the lie to chest-thumping lyrics Liam delivers with an almost audible sneer. The repetition of the refrain might be better served with an extra dollop or two of spontaneity, and while this somewhat stilted production might well be expected from Kurstin and Wyatt–who’ve worked with the likes of Adele and Lady Gaga–it doesn’t lessen the dampening effect on this performance and that of “Now That’ I’ve Found You.”

Clearly, the group put time and effort into production (the dance/electro “Flutter Freer” and vibrating “Andy Helping Andy” both sound alive) but made an artistic choice to neuter their more rock efforts. Had the instrumentals been more invigorating this may have been an interesting choice, but as People Helping People wraps, the feeling of No Age just going through the disenchanted motions sets in.

End of the Day is a bit of an enigma. Fans of Anonymous Club may enjoy the atmospheric score and recall some of their favorite accompanying scenes from the documentary. For everyone else, there’s not much to get out of it.