Certainly this record is relevant, and maybe even worth listening to with some regularity. But I can't help but feel that this album is just a watered down Arcade Fire rather than the aural adventure that others seem to hear.

It tempers Frightened Rabbit’s invigorating merriment in an attempt to turn them into an inoffensive, poker-faced troupe.

As it is, Dedication seems like a bit of a missed opportunity; as collection of ideas it may be incredible, but as an album it's just insubstantial.

While there's no doubt that Port of Morrow is well crafted, then, it fails because it is ultimately unmoving, and what Mercer has gained in style and execution is overshadowed by the album's lack of either invention or sincerity.

Born This Way sufficient for Gaga to retain her crown? Probably, but only just. It lacks the overall quality of Robyn's Body Talk or the stand-out singles of Rihanna's Loud, yet it's still packed with hooks, killer choruses and unexpected twists.

The Runaway Found is to be filed alongside Coldplay, Starsailor and Snow Patrol.

Iit’s hard to parse the logistics behind their songwriting, but there’s a tasteful equilibrium at hand even if each member brings out their own peculiarities.

One's enjoyment of Dream Get Together will depend greatly upon their appreciation for good jam sessions. Jam sessions are fine after all, but it's hard not to be a little disappointed in Citay after hearing the disparity between what they are capable of and what they want to be.

Hardcore... may be their most consistent album for a while but any of its tracks would have fitted perfectly on its predecessors Mr Beast or The Hawk is Howling.

Europe often finds itself lacking in ideas and sticking to de rigueur jangle and well-trodden indiepop tropes.

This is an album of average to good songs, with only a few highlights.

Crystal Stilts won’t be winning many new listeners with Nature Noir but that won’t matter to the band’s fanbase, as another album comparable to their previous work has been created, albeit with an improvement on the production side.

While she's developed her voice in the process, Designer being a shining example of how she showed her many talents with oft-kilter confidence, Warm Chris blends spontaneity and rigidity all at once.

Get Guilty is best enjoyed in chunks, as nearly all the tracks are great pop songs. But a full listen through can be an ordeal.

Restarter is still quite a strong sludge-metal album that can stand strong with many of their peers, but it’s sad to see them sacrifice much of what made them stand out so strongly from them in the process to merely become one of them.

Weaves have written a good debut record that is unafraid to take chances, and to an extent, it signifies a band that will only get hungrier with time. There’s still in search mode, though, exceedingly pushing themselves to write clever pop songs that sometimes expose their calculated overconfidence.

Careers can be perceived as a step backwards, or as an opportunity for Citron to find her voice, even though it may not make that much of a difference considering there’s very few variations in the tradition they dutifully follow.

Despite some flaws in its execution, Biophilia does succeed in pushing beyond the already established album-singles-videos model, and the creation of a digital experience to compliment the music feels like a natural progression in the way that music is packaged and consumed.

Bloodsports is fine, pleasant even.

It is by no means a bad album, and if you're already into the band it will provide a new fix of freakout, but to deserve any more than a 6/10 it really needs to nail the transcendental and ditch the kitsch.

After a good handful of listens nothing hugely sticks and it isn't quite clear what they're aiming for.

Excise a few tracks and La Liberacion would make a good soundtrack to the summer, or what's left of it at least

When Fish Ride Bicycles is like any high school parking lot. There are cool kids, newcomers, wallflowers and seniors that should have graduated last year but decided to stick around because it's still fun and easy.

Their name alone relieves the listener of the expectation that anything they do will make much sense, but for those willing to suspend their notions about things such as song structure, St. Helens can be an entertaining, if befuddling, experience.

When this album hits, it hits hard, but for the first time in their career, the barrage is intermittent instead of constant.

Overstuffed and a little undercooked, Lions suffers from the fact that Hatebreed’s influences aren’t terribly diverse, and many of the short, hard, and fast numbers tend to blend together in a way that won’t appeal to anyone without a working knowledge of the American hardcore canon.

Moments like Living Up to Let You Down are unforgettable; it’s just a disappointment the rest of the album isn’t even close.

Quaristice can occasionally be on the sloggish side. However, there's a lot to admire in such a brazen display of accomplishment, and, while it may not be looking to court the most gushing of affection, this will undoubtedly prove to be one of '08's most singular releases.

Lindén had some false starts in trying to realize her true vision with Warnings, and it shows—the effort she went through to craft a sound this painstakingly meticulous requires time and patience. And though we know how far she and Balck can push themselves, we're still not quite sure who exactly they want to be.

If only Plastic Hearts followed Midnight Sky’s lead, we’d have an album of disco-rock that felt true to Cyrus’ strengths.

The relentless energy expended throughout the album will no doubt also make the album appeal to fans of Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Pendulum or the Prodigy. But listeners with a broader appreciation of dance and electronic music would be well advised to source their dubstep fix from elsewhere.

The Bird and the Bee end up sounding like the soundtrack to some glossy drama about a bunch of over privileged kids living in Notting Hill.

Chance of Rain is a good techno album, but never strives for much more than that. It’s a bigger adventure, for sure, but it never feels more adventurous.

Consider Grace/Wastelands more of a step in the right direction, a sign that maybe all is not lost and he can turn things around yet.

After a promising EP that hinted at many directions (not to mention that it was a succinct five tracks) Blue only amplifies their indecisiveness instead of pointing out their strengths as songwriters.

Dear John is a definite step in the right direction.

Kindred’s arrangements are a heap of disjointed sound fragments glued into a form that exists solely to support the glossy veneer.

While it would be remiss to question an artist’s chosen working methods, perhaps if Elizabeth hadn’t been quite so fiercely independent in its recording, and had had to compete with the usual unwanted distractions of the outside world, then Dancing might not have been just an impressively accomplished album, but a more striking, perhaps even outright essential one.

They do rest a bit comfortably on what they do right, circumventing the idea of exploring new territory. This is, of course, a curse and a blessing. In presence or not, Azure Ray's stark simplicity will always remain intact.

There's not a lot fundamentally wrong with The People's Key; it's just that we know Bright Eyes can do better.

A lot of the time, this album doesn't do enough to sound much more than merely pleasant.

When We Stay Alive at times unintentionally underscores that struggle through its weakest moments, but it also embraces the perseverance required to come out on the other side with a renewed sense of self. Poliça sound eager to take that next major step and embrace a fresh start, even if they don't seem to know exactly where to go from here.

While these tracks may not have made the cut, some strong melodies and ideas make this release worth the listen.

There are so many ideas in Heartworms that give substance to Mercer’s unremitting passion to create, and though he manages to enliven and push the project forward it more so blurs Mercer’s artistic and commercial ambitions.

It’s an unfettered display of eighties-evoking posing that suits them perfectly well, but it also sounds like a step back after they’d already figured out how to match their compositional smarts with a clear message.

Sure, a couple tracks hit it just right, but by and large, once the album's over, it's not liable to pop back into my thinking.

On the new one, the drums still thunder and the space rock vibe is intact, but something is missing--and I’m not sure that something is Ben Curtis.

Ultimately, like many live albums before them and certainly after them, it's just okay. It succeeds in capturing a performance that is an apt representation of the band and is largely an aural pleasure, yet you never really shake the fruitless nature of the album.

Please Be Mine is a charming record that remains engaging and consistently pleasant, but you have to feel that there’s another gear in Molly Burch’s engine-room that could get the most out of her prodigious talent.

The Loves of Your Life was designed with each song intentionally being about a specific person, which makes even the worst songs interesting tales.

Violet Cries is the kind of album that will find a niche audience who will it defend fiercely. Broader appeal is unlikely for songs that seem so blurred around the edges and on the point of evaporating.

Saviors doesn't stray too far from what they've done in the past 10-15 years, but it's far more impassioned despite their pairing things down, proof that maintaining an agreeable middle ground with just enough anger suits them best.

The themes explored throughout the record’s massive 130-minute runtime are remarkably current--for example the Orlando shootings and the Paris attacks--and it’s these moments where the album commands absolute attention. Not even Kozelek can command it entirely for 130 minutes, though.

It's when Bridges merges a pop-oriented approach over a modern R&B groove where his creative diffidence shows.

Lupercalia, despite its flaws, does provide a satisfying sense of closure. Now, hopefully, Patrick Wolf will be able to graduate onto subjects other than himself (and an attempt to do a full-on disco record would not go amiss either).

Carrying features stellar glockenspiel work and a beautiful chorus, but uncharacteristically poor drumming and a gaudy ragtime piano solo. Perhaps the most damning indictment is that the worst songs are all similar enough to blend into each other.

Saturday Night is a record that is almost misanthropic in its progression, and an intriguing insight into Tim Darcy the artist.

It has ten passable tracks and one certified super-smash that will either get listeners gleefully singing-along or reaching for the skip button. You decide.

There’s uncertainty whether the controlled experiment of Confrontations resonates, not sonically, but emotionally.

Though Cues features some of their most accomplished songs yet, their eagerness to please both sides (not to mention a woeful Beck cameo on the dub-reggae fusion of Night Running) make for a sometimes coldly calculating listen.

While Anoyo's showcase of Hecker's ambient textures, paired with Gagaku, is organic and interesting, it feels like a retread of ideas or an assemblage of scraps from the recording of Konoyo.

Everything Else Has Gone Wrong is about getting through troubling times with grand gestures, projecting those emotions in the most outward way possible. And, coming back from that absence, demonstrating their steady growth as musicians with a joyful disposition that is contagious.

Sadly, the difference here in 2019 is that reaching the end of This Is Not a Safe Place—listening to the whole album—is not as rewarding as it needed to be.

There is nothing abrasive about Strange Weekend, nothing risky, nothing unique; there is instead just a shortage of "Wow!"

The shrill production manned by Ben Hillier over-amplifies the percussion and bass textures, making the entire project muddy in a way that can’t be intentional. While the joy occasionally breaks through (the glitchy From the Mouth is a blast), Melt Yourself Down kneecap themselves repeatedly on 100% Yes.

He is starting to concern me though, since this is the third album in a row that has left me wallowing in mild to severe disappointment.

Brilliant Sanity is occasionally brilliant, but it could greatly benefit if it let go some of its sanity.

This third effort is trying too hard to innovate by, once again in Editors fashion, obviously borrowing from somewhere else.

While standards are generally high on the record's first half, it feels like three EPs have been welded together to form Melt.

I'm going to give this bonus points for the admirable trait of messing with our heads and not apologizing for it. But in the end, the quirky ideas are found lacking and sheer bizarreness only gets you so far.

It's an in-the-moment album that's best when it's in the moment.

There is a laudably uncompromising quality to the album which I admire. But by the time I get to album finale Brunswick Sludge I find myself getting a little bored with it all. There's only so much wacky noise experimentation I can take in one go.

What we find with Tough Love is an album just as conceptually focused as Devotion, yet too willing to waste Ware’s sophisticated emotionality on tracks with no depth or purpose to them.

There certainly isn't a lack of beautifully crafted, well produced music on this release, but if you're looking for a full plate of pop-inspired power ballads, stick to the last two discs.

White Hot Moon doesn’t really vary much from their last full-length Feast of Love, though it does showcase a still-promising band that’s one step closer to finding their true identity.

The difficulty here is that each volume is a separate entry, the band’s maiden two-album release a mere showcase of multiple outlets as opposed to something consistent or whole, making what should be a milestone for the band more of a missed opportunity. With that said, listen to it, anyway. There’s still at least one very good album here.

When it’s all said and done, it’s a bit of a blur, but in the same way that looking back on a good evening might be when you wake up for work a day or two later. You’re glad it happened, but it might not stick with you.

As promising as its initial concentration of songs foretells, The Century Of Self suffers from careless sequencing, its tempos haphazardly spooned together and flung like high school portions of mashed potatoes and gravy, slopped into sections of the tray with no real purpose or benefit.

The rousing, yet equally understated the book on how to change part II brings closure with a welcome luster, though it's not enough to salvage the album's soporific middle half.

As it is, Big Black Delta offers more than its fair share of thrills, but there’s the sense it could be so much better if Bates didn’t feel the need to draw the line quite so clearly between his various projects.

Where their songs backfire to a degree comes from bringing in ex-Chairlift member Patrick Wimberly for production duties. .... Still, they're truly at their best when their tuneful choruses come paired with a raw, stripped-down treatment.

It's a fine record on its own terms, but the it's just not possible to circumvent the expectations that come with his dayjob.

There are some truly great moments here where the band crash around making glorious, daft, noisy pop music, but they stand at a stark counterpoint with the cloying experimental tendencies Barnes forces through.

Dehd are mighty expressive even if their songs are fairly one-note. With the personality thing down pat, imagine what they'll achieve when they continue to expand their scope.

Where ["The Bliss"] bubbled and spat like hot fat, its meticulous construction overflowing with polyrhythms, Black Noise seems disjointed and overlong even though it runs for roughly the same duration.

Burst Apart is a passable follow-up to an incredible record, but that's all it is. Passable.

Berdan does tap into a powerful subject matter--an exercise in looking at the past to improve his moral character--except that he juxtaposes it with stifling, and undercooked, sheets of noise. It's a step back for a duo who were inching closer toward their definitive statement.

100 Lovers has a fair few highlights, but as a whole it's merely another example of Devotchka still not managing to successfully capture the exuberance of their live show on record.

It all sounds very immaturely polished.

Skeletal Lamping is the brain dump of a troubled psyche, and you shouldn’t feel too bad if you ultimately don’t get it. I don’t think you’re supposed to.

He never gets beyond either producing a meditative song or joyful song. The difference between this album from all the millions of other acoustic albums out there? Not much.

Villagers ought to be applauded for their ambition to heave themselves away from expectation, and then mourned for their lack of conviction which discards them back into it.

It is a solid and adept demonstration of his strengths as a dance producer and his ear for a hook. Roosevelt is intended to pacify the annual, somber, post-festival comedown. Every now and then, we just have to enjoy it simply for what it is, and not what it may lack.

The King of Limbs is very much a rhythm-driven album; skittering, off-kilter beats underpin the majority of the songs on show.

It's short but manages to feel long. It's interesting but manages to feel dull.

It's great when artists learn to produce work that has more than one dimension to it. Robyn's has two. I'd just like to see her develop one or two more.

Ultimately, From The Pyre is the archetypal mixed bag, with glorious highs offset by some slightly concerning lows.

Everyday Life may not be able to reach the peaks of Coldplay’s work in the 2000s or have the discipline of the mostly-minimalist Ghost Stories, but it shows a level of creativity, imagination and sheer enjoyment in making music that felt like it had been lost.