While Vanderslice's observations and commentary sounded fresh and fierce two years ago, the same essential message run through similarly sounding songs this time around rings hollow.

Despite Price's best efforts to infuse these songs with motion and finesse, Confessions never quite reaches its earlier heights after "I Love New York". When Madonna actually starts confessing, the album loses its delicate balance between pop frivolity and spiritual gravity.

Strangely, pairing with just Mt. Sims on U&I appears to have resulted in less-focused output, with the duo gradually circling a grimy musical plughole, only managing to pull themselves out via less cluttered material in the back half of the record.

As it is, the more Auerbach changes things, the more they stay the same.

The gloriously mopey sound of new wave might be novel to Norrvide and Fischer, but there's not much here that stands out in synth-pop's always-crowded field. In a sense, that's fine; Lust for Youth wear this sound well. But Lust for Youth shows they might have escaped coldwave’s dead end only to settle into a rut.

Knowing that Kahan is capable of a song like “August” just makes the more pro forma arrangements on the rest of the album more frustrating.

Perhaps it’s deliberate that throughout The Take Off and Landing of Everything, hardly anything truly takes off. Instead the album dangles there, an effortlessly leaden exhibition of glum triumphalism--and an example of what makes Elbow, at its least potent, so subtly unsubtle.

Despite their comfortable distance from the industry machine they came up in, Aly & AJ still gravitate toward brightly-colored, big-hearted pop: an old-fashioned stance that dulls the shine of their new direction.

What makes Pan Am Stories worth returning to is the scope Knight works within, where elements of prog, folk, and psychedelia blur in and out of focus.

The moments of goodness and light here bump up against plenty of songs that are depressing or otherwise unseasonal-feeling. You're happy to get the present, but it's not exactly what you would've asked for from Santa.

The slow, sorrowful material rarely summons the urgency this subject demands, nor the emotional catharsis that rippled through Silberman’s best work.

This isn’t his grand final statement (that was Blackstar), it’s a cool little postscript tagged onto an earnest, unthrilling tribute.

Even for an artist this venerable, a remix record is still a remix record-- generally uneven, part enlightening, and part skippable.

For the kind of soul-caressing folk bobbins Adem aspires to deliver, go with Grizzly Bear.

What makes Drogas Wave especially frustrating is the way you can squint and see the shape of his possible masterpiece inside.

This band is particularly long on charm and short on technical ability, but anyone expecting a garage band to reinvent the wheel is expending far too much mental effort.

It's not so much that the songs themselves are weak, just that many of the choices made in them are.

The songs are dense and trebly, swirling and mutating but rarely growing, and too often staying way past their welcome. There are plenty of worthwhile ideas, but a seasoned producer could strategically shave 20 minutes off the album while losing little.

Yes, girl in red is capable of another skin-deep album about crushes and self-doubt. But it would be far more interesting to see her attempt sincere emotional depth.

TWIABP are now making the most technically proficient music of their career and admirably facing down some of the world’s most dire issues. But in the pursuit of radical evolution, they’ve forsaken the emotional dynamism that has consistently buoyed their music through their tumultuous history.

The productions cobble together and iron over a mix of styles appropriated from both the dance underground and Top 40, with results that are structurally varied, but with a uniform surface.

It’s frequently a difficult listen, and not for the reasons Garbus intended.

A lot of Make Another World doesn't stick the way good guitar pop should.

There are certain things they do very well, yet they don't seem to be content with being pigeonholed as one-dimensional. Unfortunately, one-dimensional is about the only thing they can pull off convincingly.

What Cave World lacks in bite, it tends to make up for in groove. The production is cleaner than Viagra Boys’ first two albums, bringing their ever-present drive to the fore.

Aside from one surprising flip of "Be My Baby", Papich doesn't seem as interested in transforming his source material as much as just presenting it.

The line between exhilarating and exasperating is still being straddled to the point where it's starting to chafe.

After the strong, finger-picked Buckingham solo feature of “In My World,” however, the rush of hearing these two pop-rock titans team up starts to wear off. ... Granted, successful moments are sprinkled throughout the whole album.

Too much of Sexor feels suspiciously like the middle of the road.

For the more casual, less obsessive listener, it can be a bit of a snooze. The songs are well chosen and certainly revealing, but Dylan and his band play them all pretty much the same, sacrificing any sense of rhythm for stately ambience.

For an MC whose lyrics don't typically allow much room for narrative scope, easygoing humor, or high-concept weirdness, that's a good way to make a sporadically inventive but otherwise passable-at-best album feel like a total slog.

The second half of the album is monochromatic and depressing, especially as it runs out to 20 tracks in certain versions.

Decent enough—and certainly the strongest project Nas has released in his current era—yet seldom amounting to more than nostalgia bait for the 40-plus contingent. It’s meant to be a celebration of these two rap titans’ respective careers, a goal the album modestly achieves, but it spends so much time dwelling on the past that it’s hard to know precisely what Nas and Primo wanted from the experience.

The album’s first half sounds relatively strong. ... But No_One Ever Really Dies runs into a wall midway through, as old ideas rear their heads like those nobbly-headed creatures in Whac-a-Mole.

While Womack does his best to step up to his alien surroundings, he can't help but sound like an out-of-place guest on his own album.

While Primrose Green is a great statement for a '70s freak-folk cosplayer, I just hope it’s not a career-defining one for Walker.

A loose, warm, and human-scale record that sounds pretty nice right out of the gate.

I Hear You strikes a frustrating standoff between these two versions of Gou: It lacks the authentic quirkiness of those earlier hits, yet never lets loose the confetti cannons and fishbowl cocktails promised by “Nanana.”

You could reasonably argue that this is Fake's most well-rounded record to date; the bigger question is whether such small refinements to such an established, well-trodden genre should merit attention from anyone other than diehards at this stage in the game.

The wall of sound is strangely, stultifyingly uniform, a thick slab of piano-led clangour--like the din of a bustling room overwhelming a lounge singer’s best efforts.

What makes these weak attempts at earnestness all the more disappointing is that the music is great.

Sometimes, the result is as frail and lovely as worn lace; sometimes it's just threadbare.

Red Hot + Fela largely presents itself as a blur of lesser, briefer imitations of Fela's Afrobeat grooves, liberally sprinkled with pro forma rapping and vocalists singing lyrics that have lost the political fire they once had.

Doom Abuse is most enjoyable when its superficial slapstick is at its most pronounced, which is most of the time.

Aldhils Arboretum and its inverted career-path singles focus disappoints.

While Yuck made listeners nostalgic for the first Clinton term, Glow & Behold will just make you wish it was 2011 again.

The Redeemer ends up somewhere between sarcasm and sensitivity, but can't dig deep enough in either direction to provide something that's worth returning to.

They can be a bit one-note sometimes, but that doesn't make them any less beloved; without their ribaldness, the world of heavy music just wouldn't be as fun.

While his prodigious talents as a rapper ensure you might enjoy Saaab Stories on a purely musical level, it’s unlikely you’ll feel better when it’s over.

Most of these tracks merely feel professional or workmanlike, sincere recordings that sadly lack inspiration.

He’s just the latest shrugging embodiment of streaming trends.

Even when not stated explicitly, most of Michel Poiccard feels like a love letter to Velasco from remaining founder Johnny Siera; there's a sadness and longing tucked into even songs that aren't ostensibly about Velasco.

Based on Rated R, Rihanna's artistic aspirations are currently loftier than her abilities. Then again, her tenacity in the face of the unimaginable public humiliation this year is beyond brave.

Most of the songs are toss-offs, but it's plenty of fun to be along for the ride as long as some restraint is issued. Without it, ForNever alternately struggles to keep its head above water with washed-out cautionary tales ("The Problem Is...") or slums it in the shallows with mildly tawdry goofs ("Asian Girl").

The album could use a little more of Fitzgerald's fiery extremes, and a bit less of meandering disappointments like "You Looked Good to Me" or "Dancing in the Stacks", but at its best it's a clever piece of musical storytelling by a band unintimidated by genre.

"Dandelion Gum" was speckled and silly and high as shit. Eating Us feels more like the baseline: collected, repeatable, respectable.

For a man who’s lived and breathed rave culture, his album about the experience is strangely lacking in highs.

Rewild is how an average debut album should pan out. It might outstrip its ambition and wear its influences too blatantly, but Amazing Baby could be something special once it all clicks.

Nas’ kingship goes down easy over Hit-Boy’s clean drums and neat arrangements, which indulge Nas’ nostalgia without kowtowing to it. ... When Nas’ rhymes aren’t clumsy, his storytelling is.

The group envelops the different elements of music available to them-- from folk, to rock, to Gram Parsons-influenced pop-- in such a way that is alternately enjoyable and excessively off-putting.

While State Hospital lacks for pure visceral pleasure, Hutchison can still convey such a deep, muscular ache in his vocals, indicating that Frightened Rabbit still know their strengths.

Ultimately, Sean's a likable character.

Despite these flashes of wit, the band’s Achilles’ heel is Baron-Gracie’s generic songwriting, which becomes most apparent when the tempo slows.

Easy to dismiss, smirk at, or even hate on the fist listen, nine out of The Snare's ten tracks are grind-and-pause, semi-sultry pairings of exotic keyboard settings and mid-tech beats that exploit their refrains and come weirdly close to the patterns of 'risqué' after-dinner radio pop circa 1999-present.

Our Pathetic Age reflects the way much of Shadow’s post-Endtroducing material has lacked structure, with the producer happy to throw ideas at the page, even if many of them don’t stick.

Prisoner is marred by weak analogies (“colder than Minnesota,” “buzz like Georgia Tech) and Kweli’s bumpy writerliness (“ornithology” and “onomatopoeia” are just two less-than-melodious words used here), leading this to be his most underwhelming record yet word-for-word.

Speck Mountain still have some distance to travel before they fill an album with such moments, so that whenever you hear their music, you think of them first rather than their influences. But this is only their second full-length, and it's a solid step in that direction.

Another Day on Earth is produced to within an inch of its life, with layers of intricate detail and the most ethereal synth washes imaginable.

The Solution is a deeply schizophrenic record, one that completely divorces Beanie's cocksure swagger from his introspective depth.

They’re still making some alluring music, yet their albums have never sounded more disjointed.

So Sewn Together is gently rustic, occasionally (a bit) heavier than you might expect, and ready for any adult-leaning-but-alternative-friendly playlist. It's also pretty bland, and at worst banally melodramatic in ways that suggest the unfortunate arrival of the Meat Puppets power ballad.

Even if a lot of Heartbeat Radio is affable and politely poppy, a lot of it is so pointedly bland that you can't help but wonder if the good stuff stands out only because of the beige filler around it.

Frustratingly, what should be the album's best song isn't on the album.... A creative chameleon with endless wells of technical skill, Worden stuffs Shark's Teeth with studied know-how.

Sometimes, the veteran Detroit rapper transcends his natural Buddenism, avoiding corny punchlines, esoteric lyrical easter eggs, and bars that lead him nowhere. At other times, he doesn’t.

Nobody's ever going to this guy for clear, concrete ideas; abstract obfuscation is what he does. On Hello Cruel World, he finds some new ways to do it. They don't work out as often as we might hope, but at least he's trying.

From here on out, Screws Get Loose starts sounding like the work of a retro-pop outfit, treading the same ground covered by the Raveonettes, the Donnas, and recent revivalist indie heroes Dum Dum Girls and Vivian Girls.

The result is disarmingly tender, adding a few heartfelt minutes of warmth and personal connection, something lacking in the rest of Dreams' gloss.

Unfortunately, none of these songs actually feel like songs. Only a few have choruses or any significant chord changes. Instead, they're set pieces, which makes sense.

The lack of technique gives Reasons to Live an unfinished quality that suggests there's either more depth than there appears to be, or an underlying emptiness deriving from too much feral energy and not enough songwriting.

Sometimes wars are won with persistence and numbers alone, after all. And in any case, when you're cruising along in a pleasure craft as nice and reliable as this one, it's all right to tread a little water.

After a while, Nobody--frenetic but faceless, too nonchalant for true nonconformity--starts to blur together.

She has indeed stepped outside with S, but perhaps not far out enough; as it stands, Moss’ journey isn’t done just yet, but the final stretches of her expedition are in sight.

After these frontloaded highlights [Andrew in Drag, God Wants Us to Wait], it doesn't take long for Love at the Bottom of the Sea to become a rain-boot-worthy slog through water-logged mid-tempo material.

The group is a conglomeration of influences that, while pleasant enough, doesn't rise above being anything more than a mixing board of cool-sounding favorites.

In short, if your favorite bands aren't played between Audioslave and Foo Fighters on modern rock radio, Cave In probably isn't one of them.

Snow Blindness isn't essential listening for anyone but VanGaalen's most dedicated fans, but it is an enjoyable, occasionally even great record.

The Incredible True Story is a pleasant voyage to Paradise orchestrated by an artist who’s earned the approval of legends from Rick Rubin to Big Daddy Kane. Logic has the tools to create music that has longevity, but has yet to unlock the characteristics that truly set him apart.

Hill's work is steadily gaining its own hue, and this album is a step toward a recognizable Umberto sound that won't instantly be tagged with all the influences he so adores.

The truth is he could have amped it up in both departments—more hunger to prove himself beyond his influences, more fearlessness to work outside his comfort zone. Even if this is one of his stronger albums, the whole thing feels self-consciously minor.

It's a rare moment of intrigue on an album that's generous in its beauty while leaving little to wonder about, a sky that never rains.

While much of the tape is forgettable, Still Striving is not without its standout moments.

On a whole, Whatever is milder and gentler than the darker Become What You Are; that comes with age, I guess. But, all said, it does feel like a return.

Tucker and Buck remain an electric match, and minus the lyrics, their songs knit together well. They are great and talented musicians. But the subjects they tackle demand more raw nerve than Filthy Friends seem willing to put to tape.

By aiming for the textbook definition of a big-picture pop album, Antonoff has ended up with the epitome of a vanity project: an album that revolves entirely around one person, made more enjoyable the less you expect from it.

Further into the record, the band invests in smaller details, and when it does the songs overcome the lyrical shortcomings.

Nearly every track on Lost on the River has a couple of memorable moments: a marvelous turn of phrase, a brief Jim James guitar meltdown, an instant of the band members discovering how their voices can harmonize. But what it lacks is the casual joy of Dylan's Basement Tapes.

There's something to be said for a debut album that so vehemently defies conformity, even if it kinda cuts off its nose to spite its face in the process.

The ultimate compliment for Life Under the Gun wasn’t “catchy,” but “punchy,” their songs direct and delivered with a stiff jaw and clenched fist. The exact opposite is true on God Save the Gun; half the time, if a song reaches two minutes, it might as well add a bridge that gets it to three.