Dirty Projectors ultimately leaves one too puzzled to empathize with apart from letting out a false, mouth-gaping awe.

Inexplicably, predictably, Daft Punk have become the first band to produce a retro post-parody of their own work.

Not once does this record manage to clamber out of its self-imposed constraints of mediocrity; and for a band genuinely capable of blissful set piece tracks, that makes it mostly a somewhat distressing token.

Melodies swoop and soar, vocals are sweet and clear and some of the choruses are truly fantastic. However, its lasting impression is as an omnishambles of poor choices and awful skits and is, simply put, an absolute mess of an album.

What's absent about The Center Won't Hold is that it presents a powerful and necessary premise, only to find out that there's not much of a message behind it. Sleater Kinney sure have a lot to say, but overall, they don't end up saying much.

Side-by-side with an "original" release, especially 2002's Control, a bit of life just seems to be missing in this resurrection.

Overall, Outer Peace is a half-hearted attempt coming from an artist who’s testing a series of rough sketches in real time.

Considering the nine other songs on this album mix lazy production with unfocused rapping, The Return of Mr. Zone Six is a largely forgettable album.

To be fair, if it weren't for Lynch's lacklustre vocals and lyrics there might be a fairly solid collection of atmospheric retro rock 'n' roll here, but as it seems to be coming at the expense of his film career that's still not quite good enough.

There are areas, in the likes of Instrument, where the creeping grooves are compelling and the tension is perfectly poised, but time and time again these moments are lost amongst reverb bursts and toxic swells that go past the point of creating a metronomic cue to something sinister, and instead appear vexatious in their oppression.

Noah And The Whale would have done better to focus on the more organic sound they became quite good at than become just another forgettable crossover act.

Great art must provoke or inspire you, and I’m sorry to all the folks out there “awash” in Eluvium’s dreamy “soundscapes” of pure “emotion” and “beauty”, but this record does neither.

The album sounds familiar far too quickly. [But] when Interstellar hits, however, it hits hard.

Unfortunately, they didn’t miss by biting off more than they could chew; it’s more a sense of complacency you get form listening to Walk It Off.

This album simply lacks the impact that Vanderslice's trademark sound usually packs in abundance. The bare bones of his usually excellent songwriting are there, but it's more constrained by the orchestration than set free.

Listen is set to force you into either accepting the band’s new identity or hitting upon the realisation that the band you originally fell in love with have moved on.

It just feels like all the wacky studio noise takes away from what could have been a really fun album.

While Season High has its showstopping moments, as a whole it tries to cram in too many ideas into a variety of disjointed themes.

Perhaps ... the best way to describe Boys & Girls: unwilling to innovate or add anything new to its genre, preferring to remind us of the roots of rock instead of showing us what made the pioneers so great, a reminder of a past love instead of a new love for us to discover.

The “that's life” solemnity that throbs in Vestiges quickly fizzles into a series of narrative incoherent niceties, and becomes a far more rewarding listen when lyrical fragments are taken out of context.

Despite the occasional flashes of brilliance, Codes and Keys often feels like a half assed attempt at innovation.

Cottrill's clear songwriting focus gets bogged down with mellow, listless ballads that sound pleasant—and not much else.

Despite the album's likable, glistening production, though, the duo mostly chooses to dismiss the darkness rather than embrace it—emphasizing a pop veneer that is bold, bright, and, well, a little bit boring.

[The album] is disappointing, but not because it's unmusical or masturbatory or boring, although it is sure to be dismissed as all these things. On paper I love the idea of the musical direction of the record – there are just some insurmountable problems with the execution of it.

It’s difficult to qualify Somewhere Else as middling because it proposes a whole new set of exciting challenges for Shapiro, but it also brings about a befuddling, poorly sequenced effort that crosses out songwriting ingenuity with across-the-board dancehall padding.

The Menzingers established themselves as a group interested in moving forward—even if they wrote about those high school days. Hello Exile fails to follow through on that promise.

While Perry finds the occasional moment of quality here (Smile and Tucked both feel like the best possible music we could get from Katy Perry in 2020), Smile is an album searching for an identity—and when it fails, it falls back on lazy writing.

Backed up by masters of electronica David Guetta, Diplo and Swedish House Mafia’s Sebastian Ingrosso, they all make sure to drop a storm of ugly, trite and utterly soulless EDM breakdowns and dubstep drops whenever they can.

They are only a few steps away from making a truly great record, because they certainly aren't lacking in talent, they just need an identity to give it a purpose.

jj no 3, in essence, fails to carry the same number of dimensions and, unfortunately, and perhaps unfairly, reduces jj to a hype machine.

It’s an album focused on a very limited range of moods, and inhabits that tone very well, but ultimately does little to justify sticking around.

It may be a bit dull and overlong (a three to five song EP of this would have sufficed), but he doesn’t care. It’s his music and he’ll do what he damn well pleases with it.

Too much of Weathervanes is unnecessary fluff. Of the album's 13 tracks, three are wordless moments of focus-less, meaningless noise and at least three other songs could have been trimmed down by a few minutes.

Different Gear, Still Speeding could be a good album if they just scaled things down a bit.

The good news, at least, is that Phantogram have made a solid album. The bad news is that it spans across their two LPs with plenty of forgettable filler in between.

The anthemic choruses largely remain but are endlessly unsatisfying and constrained. Given the unmistakeably grittier and less atmospheric qualities of this album it was the right to attempt to temper them; I'm just not so sure they pulled it off.

Largely, the band’s turn from paradoxically sweet Goth-pop to the more treaded territory jangle-pop works against them.

Not only does the music feel like filler and lacking in substance but the album itself feels like it’s only purpose is to merely keep music ticking over until something worthwhile comes along.

There’s a whole lot of beauty in As Seen Through Windows, but it isn’t attainable beauty. When the music stops, so does it disappear, leaving you feeling as though you’ve lost something in the process.

The first two tracks (two of the three singles from the album) are irritatingly underwhelming, and only Carrion (the third of the aforementioned singles) conveys any of the urgency and compactness required to really grab a listeners' attention.

They rekindle some of that fiery passion with The Doomed, a stunning example of grand, orchestral rock with some majestic touches. But for every explosive, curtain-closing exit there's the lifeless anthem.

The only saving grace, pun possibly intended, is God Is, where West's voice genuinely cracks as he calls the Lord over a soulful sample. As you might imagine, the production overall is expectedly top-notch. But that's the slight upside to an otherwise tepid attempt at finding commonality with his devout followers—except that we never wanted West to come across as ordinary as the rest of us.

FRIGS half-convincingly communicate their agitation over piercing shards of noise. The band are at their best when the rhythm section takes charge.

It needs a more tangible emotional charge. What it most sorely lacks is spontaneity.

Kehlani replaces any hint of controlled pop presence with a lowkey, gloomy vibe that doesn’t suit her strengths at all. Her raspy voice is now placed upon liquid synth bass and irritating trap production, leaving her songwriting to be the record’s only strength.

Taken as a whole, The Soft Pack isn’t exceptionally challenging or memorable, though it does leave space to appreciate a few of its singles.

Sure there's some nice stuff here and no one ever said Stevens lacked ideas. But I'm telling you that despite this, The Age of Adz is a major misfire from an artist of uncommon depth and talent.

Almost without exception it seems this album delivers good but never great: and, when you put it like that, its clear that good is not good enough.

There are jaunty little stabs at the band’s earlier post-punk revival sound, but even these are more of a pedestrian shuffle than an exuberant rush. Audacious is pleasant enough in a toe-tapping kind of way, but it’s still something of a misnomer. Elsewhere, the harder Kapranos flails around trying to recapture the magic of old, the more desperate and sad The Human Fear sounds.

For a collection of songs that are supposed to be carrying the weight of an imminent apocalypse on their shoulders, there are very few moments to be found on Top 10 Hits that seem to be affected by this burden.

This album’s got plodding drum work, tasteless guitar work, and some of Paulson’s worst lyrics ever, but it’s also an interesting album.

Less a statement on White Lung’s potential than its ability to rush through an album, through its attempts at relentlessness, Deep Fantasy underwhelms.

Now he's making albums about recovering from addiction, sounding worn out and uninspired. Dude needs to find a muse or something.

Despite a fairly catastrophic mid-album dip in quality, there are enough of the big soaring numbers, and a smattering of new ideas to see him through. So it's just like most other Moby albums really.

Icky Thump is an anti-climatic, vaguely appealing record that unfortunately feels like a retreat from the ballsy piano-based pop eccentricity of Get Behind Me Satan. And that's a shame because going back to basics — at least in this case — feels like surrender.

It’s as though Dacus’s best parts have been filtered through a focus group--just imagine what it could have been with the patina scraped off.

The band seems to have decided musical chops and precision production are more important than ideas, turning Time to Die into a startlingly streamlined affair that passes without leaving much of a mark.

The implication is that there was some kind of journey involved in getting from Point A to Point B in Trans Am’s spaceship of Douglas Adams-worthy quirks. But after twelve tracks totaling a brief-seeming thirty eight minutes, and despite some interesting routes, it feels like we’ve barely left the launch pad.

Since Nodzzz songs rely mostly on sporadic ruminations, they communicate much more effectively when a satisfying guitar riff surprises as opposed to when they build an entire song on little life tidbits that don't amount to much.

His boyish sensibilities alongside his weary, romantic croon does grate, and especially so considering he’s taking a musical approach that automatically puts him in a more vulnerable place. But in trying to find his groove back, Maine’s insular stiffness fails to provide any plausible authenticity.

If you really love the lounge vibe, you'll likely enjoy this trip. For everyone else though, keep your visit to Room 29 a short, selective one.

If it were not for Katy's distinctive voice--which she gloriously wields with an Aguilera-like ferocity during the last forty seconds or so of each track--Honey would not survive its own sweetness. At certain moments, however, the energies between Katy and the producers mesh just right, resulting in alchemic varieties of urban pop that glow brighter after each listen.

The production on this album is bearable and more or less gets the job done, but is mostly composed of bothersome loops. This leaves the bulk of the work to the emcees. And quite frankly, some show up, and some most certainly do not.

The biggest issue with Songs of Surrender is that U2 often fail to be malleable enough to truly stretch their wings and radically reshape these tracks. They too often, to their detriment, play it safe.

It doesn't really work for either audience it aspires to please, and I'm left feeling a bit bored.

Go! Pop! Bang! is a fun album, even when it's suffering from the too many cooks syndrome. I just hope Rye Rye asserts more control over her next release.

Aside from Billie Joe’s willingness to open up on more troubling personal issues, of which he only hints, the majority of Revolution Radio is all sheen and no spark.

It’s confident and cohesive, but the precision may not be the Gossip’s ideal sound.

It's elegant, but hardly likely to inspire any particularly stirring flights of fancy, or any reevaluations of the band's post-Moon Safari discography.

Though Owens takes precise measures to avoid it, the downfall of Lysandre ultimately comes down to this same-y-ness, as the majority of the album's tracks do very little to truly grab the listeners attention.

What really makes this album the disappointment that it is is not the songs that wallow in the background. It's relistening to his earlier work that puts it into perspective.

It's just such a boringly average release that the band seems to have retrogressed into one of the millions of anonymous and pretentious electro-drone bands that exist nowadays.

Part 2, by comparison [to Part 1], simply feels like an inessential cash grab, and it's strong evidence that everyone’s favorite pop star might be overstaying his welcome.

The main issue with Mr. M is that, while it's beautiful on the surface, it doesn't really go anywhere.

Deeper Than Rap is a single-minded record about making money off of drugs and nothing more. You could do a lot better than Rick Ross, but you could also do a lot worse.

Certain songs try to recapture their old glory, while others feel like an embarrassing pop ploy—but the most consistent feeling is pure disappointment. Even when Green Day is supposedly having fun here, they sound tired and overworked at best.

In conclusion, solid record, but it simply does not hit home hard enough.

For whatever faults lie within the grooves of Hexadic, the cards were at least interestingly dealt.

Youth Authority is a testament to the resilience of their energy, even as the band headbangs towards middle age. It's an energy that manifests itself sometimes in cringey nostalgia, other times in uninspired sentimentalism, but mostly it's anthemic and endearing.

Though charmingly lo-fi and sure to satisfy any enamoured female fan, most of these tracks drag on too long without any payoff.

The Black Keys have created a record that they believe is how a rock'n'roll record should sound, but without soul or sex or genuine sweet emotion.

Too many songs disappoint, though.

If he'd played up his vocals over his vitriol, Brutalist Bricks could have been a much better album. Loud and messy may be the hallmarks of hardcore, but showcasing his talents would have made a bigger impact, both musically and politically.

While it shares many similarities with the quieter side of their first record, it never quite achieves the same heart-rending beauty we know they're capable of.

here's no escaping the fact that although Mazes are quite capable of a good tune, there's often very little to separate one track from the next.

La Di Da Di is full of very cool timbres and some incredible drumming, but its arrangements leave a lot to be desired.

These songs are all, for the most part, perfectly adequate, but we've heard better and stronger songs from Sadier before. It's not so much a sucker punch as a blunt disappointment from an artist who we know can do so much better.

Hints of regularity are often dropped before being snatched away from you in vaudevillian style. There’s an awful lot to be admired about Clementine’s approach, but it’s certainly not an easy listen.

Is this the groundbreaking work we'd perhaps hoped for during the album's initial release, an effort worthy of that preliminary giddiness? Sadly, no. Is it an interesting mix of tracks that confronts listeners with reimaging of songs so deeply tied to our heart strings we have no choice but to carefully imbibe and evaluate each note? Sure.

The EP works much better as a B-side companion to Furr, because neither the energy nor the ratio of good songs to so-so songs is high enough for the record to stand on its own.

Like the super-impositions of the cover art, there’s nothing solid here (other than that all-pervasive bass-line), which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the general feeling of ethereal politeness does rather expose the moments.

Sometimes, Kath will try to replicate the past with a house-oriented number like Frail, where Francis tries her best to replicate Glass’s contagious shrieking but without the same stage presence. In spite of this, Amnesty (I) isn’t afraid of glossing over its faults in hopes of trying out new things.

The third LP from Jessie Ware sees her bring her diva mode to the forefront of her sound, but the lack of the scarcity and minimalism that saw her emerge at the turn of the decade results in the finished product lacking the effectiveness of her earlier work.

Each track in its own right has nothing inherently wrong with it, but put eleven of them together and it’s all a little one-dimensional.

While the better songs sound rough around the edges, their inferior material here sounds scrappy and juvenile.

Invaders Must Die isn’t a bad album, but in the end it suffers from having a beginning which is, if anything, too good.

Daughter seem trapped within the confines of their influences.

It's a cleanly produced album, sure, but it lacks the attitude of the era from where it came, the 1970s.