While the range of tangents explored makes it a more interesting album, its lack of incisiveness prevents Lemon Memory from being called a better record.

Even if his insecurities can illicit a few cringes (he sounds genuinely upset with his haters on All The Shine), there's enough empowered anthems like Bonfire and Outside for Childish Gambino to pull through.

These songs probably sound otherworldly when played live, but the over-laden stylization actually fills Lungs with unnecessary fat.

Carter’s default psyche is an afflicted one, and his lyrics commenting on the migrant crisis typically don't pull any punches. On the other hand, his first steps into a more ornate sound on Neon Rust is a welcome change.

Despite many good songs on this album, you will definitely get a sense that Depeche Mode is in a holding pattern.

These delicate people really know how to solidify a pretty picture, especially when they offset their lovin' spoonful of virtue with some muffled resonance. This time around, the Kings are downright cheating instead of tirelessly studying to make the grade.

While Link's observations are often engaging on the album, they can sometimes get lost in her sometimes-affected lethargy.

Since the lyrical content now borders on morose and even sadistic, the music also follows the leader with a muck of baseless solos and thrilling codas to compensate for the otherwise linear compositions.

It’s an engaging listen, sure, but sadly Our Earthly Pleasures lacks the euphoric punch to make a listener jump up and down vigourously.

These are tracks that are built for individual consumption across a myriad of online platforms, so the composition of the album perhaps lessens in importance. Nevertheless, a couple more from the darker end like Free Woman' and Replay would achieve a bit more of the blend I suspect she was going for. Chromatica has its moments, but it isn't an album to play on repeat.

Where Volume One was strongest was simply the quality of the songs (try getting Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? out of your head in a hurry), yet there’s something sadly lacking about Volume Two, and what previously sounded like finely-crafted homage is now often more like impotent pastiche.

Fun, but also forgettable, Power Chords marks a not-so-bold transition for an artist who's on track to reinvent his sound.

While Palomo advances his songwriting by attempting a concept album, he fails to vary the songs enough to allow their inner essence to shine, to glow, to hook inside the listener, to haunt them.

The intensity of its stylistic approach leaves it feeling nothing short of a musical dissertation as it side-steps melodies, bridges and verses from the get-go.

Lust For Life may be a scattered, confusing record, but it's a beautiful ride--one worth repeated listens, even if Lana's intentions--like her enunciation--aren't always clear.

Time Skiffs isn’t terrible; it’s inoffensive, nice, surprisingly easy-going.

There's a weird combination of influences at work here.

The triple LP effect doesn’t ruin the album, but it would have been stronger had they edited the whole thing down to the best songs that could fit on one disc.

Wrong Creatures is an impeccably produced record that will undoubtedly appeal to any devout Black Rebel Motorcycle Club listener. Every charging, hard rock guitar and squelching feedback strikes with a sharpness that does not come at the price of distortion. Still, the marked contrasts in Creatures give the impression that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were aiming for a sweeping, meticulously-layered force of Be Here Now-like proportions.

Woods consciously goes for simplicity, not depth. The musicianship complements that goal appropriately on Strange to Explain, an album that hazily focuses on themes of dreams and sleep. The wah-wah guitars, Mellotron, and gentle, upbeat drums match the laconic subject matter to relaxing and pleasant, if forgettable, effect, sort of like a dream.

At times it’s as if the band is still trying to figure out the right temperament to base off of for the extent of a full-length album. The result is an uneven pairing of drive and control, and the latter tends to push them towards worn-out novelty with greater force.

Hurley sums up like a consumer guide of all the musical directions Weezer has explored throughout the years.

Over the course of this slightly bloated track listing there is too much focus on the soft rock element of her sound and this which works to the detriment of her fascinating lyrics and bewitching theatrics.

Whether Glory will have the same commercial and cultural impact remains to be seen, but for now, Britney fans can rejoice: part of her is indeed back.

It’s their weakest album by far. But there are segments of radiant brilliance that will make you wonder what could have been. Going forward, the band needs to regain their balance and find that grounded perspective while reaching for the stars again.

The lyrics, like the trio's over-familiar vintage keyboards and melodic guitars, feel mailed in. On the other hand, the middle of Thin Mind hits a refreshing apex, starting with the fourth track, Out of Control.

There's nothing wrong with Lizzo's so-called "genreless," agenda-forward sound (nor did Pitchfork claim that there was, and I'm not one to side with their opinions as a rule), but it does lack a certain cohesion and maturity.

Their latest, the duo remain steadfast to that commitment with creamy, dancefloor-ready techno (Happy People, Will-o-the-wisp)—joyously documenting the anticipation before a night out.

Melodic pop-punk is the point, after all, and on that level it’s a success. Even with a muddled message, credit is due for the ambition it takes to vent these modern frustrations and break free from the shackles of verse-chorus-verse.

Broken Bells is clearly a mood record, but even with so many textures, resources and talent, it all hits one stilted note. Either this is an indicator of where the temporarily Shin-less Mercer is headed or its little more than a curious footnote on his and Burton's careers.

The songwriting on songs like “Wake Up and Smile” and “Maybe I'll Burn My Life Down,” while adventurous to a degree, usually delivers the same result: the layering of a few sonic embellishments to rough-edged anthems that end up clashing against each other. But the main offenders are the most straightforward.

Megadeth's self-titled swan song is weighted down by its own sense of importance.

While Vig does a commendable job in providing tasteful sequencing throughout Tenterhooks, the band sticks to a frustrating middle lane as the album progresses.

This is the main strength of Fang Island's songwriting, their ear for power-pop catchiness. But they've also implicitly revealed their fatal flaw: they don't give you enough of a sense of suspense and release which makes those climaxes your favourite parts.

Both pared down and unengaging at the same time, this appears to be a dead end.

It can sound almost laborious in its structural directness mixed with its lyrical opacity.

Much of A Wasteland Companion suffers from the unimaginative fluff that plagued 2009's Hold Time.

Going from an awful opening half to a solid backend was hard enough, but the real villain of Magic Touch is Name’s bitter perspective. On an album about breaking up and getting back together, he isn’t a narrator that you want to spend time around.

G I R L sounds like the work of a much less interesting artist. But if Pharrell’s goal was to bring happiness to his listeners and vibrant tunes to the charts, then by all means he’s fulfilled his goal.

It’s not to say that English Graffiti is musically incompetent, though their impulse to borrow eighties nostalgia is more akin to that of perusing your relative’s baby boomer collection instead of following your cool uncle’s guidance.

Mythomania’s level of sophistication is not hard to achieve and it certainly does nothing to elevate Cohen’s abilities, his contributions to Deerhoof being markedly superior.

The music saves this album from certain disaster--an idea that, at its root is perplexing at best, is executed in an even more clumsy and confusing way.

A 37-minute album that feels closer to feature-length.

Original Colors isn't extraordinary music.

Although at it's best The Gathering is an immersive throwback to a bygone age, considering there are already many records that do this sort of thing much more consistently, it's difficult to recommend.

They haven’t exactly lost their sense of intrigue, it’s just that on Dear Science it all sounds a lot less intriguing.

The often overly-enthusiastic arrangements threaten to smother the qualities that made Rodrigo y Gabriela special in the first place with the quiet brutality of their guitar playing often lost in the extended jam-band style... structures.

This brand of thoughtful ambient music is certainly not for everyone, but those willing to take the plunge may just come away surprised. After all, being perhaps too original and ambitious is often better than being trite and derivative.

There is a lack of uniqueness in the overall concepts and sonics of the project.

Through their first two releases, Foals were able to showcase their evolving sound, but with Holy Fire, their evolution stops dead in its tracks.

There are some more subdued moments (the quiet standout Stumbling Bee) but on the whole Extreme Witchcraft is a frustratingly stodgy affair.

Rather than being enjoyable, listening to Breathe in its entirety soon becomes a chore.

There is very little substance either musically or lyrically, and by the end of the album it feels like the album is already recycling ideas.

Alexis Krauss is still a potent vocal performer, though the same cannot be said for an album that stubbornly covers the entire contemporary pop gamut with an an irritating self-confidence. It ultimately sabotages their own efforts.

They're good but not excellent; they have brilliant songwriting over mediocre melodies and the old-newness becomes old again quickly. Five. Right smack dab in the middle of nothing and everything.

It’s not a completely futile exercise--there are some decent tracks--but it falls far short of the quality of its predecessor.

When Friends get down to it, the energy that brought them together dictates the making of half-profound statements in retro R&B funk jams; and frankly, the result is brilliant.... Yet, when they explore other avenues, the band seem unable to hide their influence and consequently come off as half-hearted.

It doesn’t leave much to the imagination; in fact, it states quite clear that there’s not much substance behind their muscular, other times grounded, modern rock template.

While Outer South may represent a step back from last year’s work, it is perhaps another step forward for Oberst in terms of his evolution as an artist.

There Is No Year is one of the most disappointing follow-ups in recent memory. Knowing the group is capable of much more gives hope for a re-energized effort in their future.

Teeth Dreams on its own sounds like a transitional record, compelling in spots but nevertheless unfulfilling.

On a Saturday night, in an adrenaline soaked club with a nasty bass--Simian Mobile Disco is amongst the greatest fun you’ll ever have. But on a perfectly round, 16 gram piece of plastic--it ain’t really worth a damn.

It’s too flabby to listen to as a whole, and unless the label decides to re-release 'Stuck On Repeat' (which isn’t a bad idea actually) there’s nothing here strong enough to force a mainstream breakthrough.

The Achilles’ heel of this record isn’t the songs themselves but the production: drums throughout are blocky and distracting, guitars are washy and lacking personality, and the aforementioned synthesizers rarely fit the songwriting.

Grohl and Co. have celebrated the veins of American rock music from coast to coast, but their fear of over-administering each city’s sonic roots into their own blueprint has hindered the progression of Sonic Highways into a cohesive unit, and instead resulted in a challenging listen.

For all the interesting noises that the band have come up with in the studio, the production really doesn't do them any favours, cramming them into a fairly narrow space and stripping them almost entirely of any sense of atmosphere.

All that said, it’s only about a third as bad as it sounds. It’s fairly tolerable as far as extreme self indulgence goes.

Robinson certainly bolsters There Is A Way's meaty riffs and hooks; those guitars sound a bit more Kerrang than NME on this second album. The band's songwriting too is more restrained and conventional, but always high octane – they scream overwhelmingly through the whole album without really letting you pause for breath.

I'm With You is the sound of a band that continues to coast off past achievements.

Fortunately, his two other pieces on the record, Mallet Quartet, and Dance Patterns are nothing short of the flowery style that make Reich's music so rich. WTC 9/11, on the other hand, just sounds muddy.

It’s an album without the excitement of the first Digital Shades without the correct tones and instruments to recall those pioneers, and in terms of quality, Junk is still a little better.

As dedicated as he is to forming these characters into life-size beings, it doesn't change the fact that some are less interesting than others due to a lack of personification.

Repetition is considered their weakest strength, which isn't true at all--they introduce shrill synth textures and dub elements with a good understanding of technique. It does add the slightest variation to their acerbic post-punk, all rendered with a cheerful stance even if there’s an apparent loss of rage. Still, this party feels less exciting than the night before.

Weezer’s maddeningly inane lyrics sometimes work, but they aren’t doing much to move the needle here. At least the album sounds nice, as that’s more than you could say for plenty of previous albums from Cuomo and the gang. We might as well enjoy it.

Hansen has appropriated this kind of self-reflective, blissful IDM with skilled craft, but when the final result is too inwardly focused and monolithic you wish he’d let out a bit more.

It feels churlish to criticise Everything Everything for trying different things, but all too often their efforts feel like lightweight flirtations with a style rather than committed explorations.

While there’s moments of excellence overall, the majority of Songs for the General Public feels like a self-aggrandizing duo getting high on their own supply.

In Cold Blood follows and is excellent, with code-like vocals and a brass-funk cascade drenching a menacing chorus. Hit Me Like That Snare is alt-J flexing their nerdiness, and Deadcrush is great. The final three tracks of the record are painfully boring and terminally so.

A band who could easily lit up a faithful audience with tender and yearning emotions is failing to connect on spin, and beginning to show signs of exhaustion, lending themselves to a stately, unambitious format that’s consistent to a fault.

Rather than going for broke, Depeche Mode eked out a half-decent release that doesn't do either the theme or their abilities any justice. It may be called Spirit, but this album is sorely lacking in soul.

The songwriting [on Bloom] is rarely stronger [than on previous albums], never different, and more hit-and-miss than I thought Beach House were capable of. It's not their worst record, but it's already their most tired, and that should never, ever happen on a fourth LP. But at least it's pretty.

For a band like Cursive to produce an album as self-pitying and mournful as Swollen is, frankly, a disappointment, especially considering the fact that the Omaha quartet tackled twenty-something melodrama with such delightful insolence on "Ugly Organ."

There are two great tracks here, three solid ones, and five complete duds.

What I am saying is that the songs on this EP already feel old, excavated from the self-titled record and surgically removed from the romanticized 80s.

There is absolutely nobody in the world but hardcore Apples in Stereo fans that need to hear Travellers in Space and Time, it's a record as slight as they come.

The songs are consistently decent, even if they don’t have the edge and the energy of their Comfort sisters, but the vast majority are ultimately forgettable.

There are glimpses at what Alt-J may attempt in the future if they want to continue collaborating, and few would complain if that’s the case given the high points here, but at present, Reduxer is full of missteps from a band who seemingly can’t help themselves at this point.

Wildheart impresses in parts, and Miguel’s vocals are a thing to behold. For the most part, however, it’s a record that struggles to fully hold your attention.

It quickly veers into a curious stream of whim with their most alienating, and unfortunately, their most characterless yet--they deliver an onslaught of acrimonious synths in the post-apocalyptic, jazz-tinged Mystery Disease, while Cool Song No. 2 shamelessly takes a page out of the Can playbook with its grimy, overcompressed effects.

At least they're better than The Vines.

It's not the first time a band of this stature chooses to find their confidence by taking it slow. But neither is it too daring or too unhinged; in fact, sans the slower, more methodical tempos, many of the songs still fall under their common pairing of doo-wop chord progressions and piercing guitars. So much of your appreciation for Tranquility may depend on how much you can stomach Turner's interpretative dance.

The songs are flat and unoriginal rock.

Everyone will find something appealing about Dananananaykroyd, no matter how small, but it’s difficult to imagine anyone truly loving this record, regardless of whether they judge it by its cover.

While California Nights doesn’t offer a more sophisticated version of Best Coast so much as a blander one, the heightened ambition of the songwriting and production could be an important step forward for the band.

Asleep at Heaven’s Gate is strangely flawed because the warmth of the first two albums has been exchanged for grandeur and detached shellac. By no means is this a fall from grace for Rogue Wave, but it is the band’s first significant stumble.

No amount of technical prowess can disguise O'Brien himself as a frontman, whose voice and personality is agreeable but never compelling. Because even if he feels it, it doesn't necessarily mean it's there.

How these twee-approved embellishments help the record are hard to prove, seeing as none of them give it the edge it sorely needs. Yet, in the least, the gentle sighs render Mister Pop as intermittently pretty as it is prosaic, and point toward a new, if unstable, direction for the band.

Most of Hypnotic Nights already sounds worn out.