With Herbert, I've always been happy to consider the political content of the records to be a clever bonus, while the music as a purely sonic experience is allowed to stand on its own. I listened to Plat du Jour five or six times without paying attention to the song titles and not having read the online methodological descriptions, and this one didn't hold up quite so well.

So while La La Land may not be the stellar follow-up that Parc Avenue deserved, it does offer something for fans willing to look beyond its tarted-up exterior.

Pop Negro feels transitional. El Guincho has a clear abundance of talent; he simply didn't harness it this time around.

On Marauder, there’s a new kind of emptiness, of hearing an Interpol album that doesn’t really seem concerned with doing better than “good enough.”

Carpenter’s bandmates mostly help him resurrect an old sound instead of crafting a newer, fresher one, yielding distinctly diminished returns.

["Big Mama" is] a brief flash of greatness on an album overwhelmingly satisfied with the mundane.

While Relationship of Command doesn't quite compare to seeing this group live, you'll surely want to mosh-dance in your bedroom when you listen to this recording.

Hypersonic Missiles on its own is unsatisfying, and the overconfident presentation risks stifling his voice before he’s found it.

Theirs is the rare lead vocalist/backing vocalist dynamic that feels like an equal partnership, with Violet’s injections propelling these songs nearly as much as their rubbery bass lines or pogoing guitars.

Ditto’s non-traditional view down a well-trodden path is welcome, but you do wish she’d kick up the dust a bit more.

One gets the sense, however, that in acknowledging where his inspirations came from and figuring out where his compositions will go on Take My Breath Away, he's misplaced the present tense and the once-present tension.

Cronin’s dulcet hesitance has given way to slightly meeker delivery. The hooks are there--in the engaging vocal counterpoint to a descending horn line on the bridge of "Say", for instance--but they’re difficult to appreciate.

It doesn't help that Cole brings the least-flavorful bars of his career to his debut, aiming, most likely, for something more universal than his diaristic mixtapes. The few glints we get of his personal life are intriguing.

On Hotspot, the best-selling duo in UK pop dampen the euphoria; the result is a tuneful, wan album: a mid-tier effort.

The whole of Playground in a Lake suffers from the flatness of its instrumentation and emotional range.

The math-rock drums and hard-edged guitars that balance the band’s pop instincts have been mostly smoothed out; the blaring brass of some of their most anthemic songs is no more. At their best, Field Music take risks. Flat White Moon is a record that too often plays it safe.

Though Younge and Shaheed Muhammad may enjoy casting themselves as career revivalists, Roy Ayers JID 002, as pleasant and groovy as it is, never quite feels like a true Roy Ayers work.

Ultimately, The Fountain is an echo of an echo, inessential to all but the band's most devoted followers.

The writing is so meandering and mechanical that little here feels intentional, even the gaps. And strangely, that’s the bittersweet takeaway: Nas the meticulous observer has been supplanted by Nas the nervous rambler. It doesn’t feel like an accident.

The record feels like standing water, Herring is so entrenched in the past it’s hard to tell who he really is on so much of this record. There are, however, moments when the light shines in with the vibrancy of stained glass.

Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped, Krug's first post-Wolf Parade LP, feels like ritual music infused with 1980s nostalgia.

But if this introduction presents a retreat from the heavy metal parking lot, the rest of Western Xterminator returns to the usual spot and sets up a permanent trailer-home in it, with the 70s-Stones sleaze of Herrema's former band all but vanquished for a full-on 80s headbanger's ball pitched halfway between Sunset Strip flash and New Wave of British Heavy Metal thrash.

Tracks such as “There Was a Button” and “Traanc” are acceptable as minimal-house DJ tools, but as greater parts of a long-playing whole, they seem lost for a broader context--a context Dear previously had no trouble offering. Only at Alpha’s tail end does Audion’s (and Dear’s) personality assert itself.

It's a shame the Rakes stopped just as they were starting to sound fun again, but if they had to end it while they still had that last spark of fun left, it's a better decision than most successful bands can bring themselves to make.

Crybaby displays neither the maturity of a band in a retrospective era, nor the sense of fun of a band trying not to grow up; instead, there’s something loose-ended about it—like it’s a companion piece to all the mythmaking and nostalgizing, rather than the other way around.

Though it is easy to grasp the broad appeal of Aiko’s music, it’s harder to decipher whether the songs are more appealing than the mere atmosphere they create.

Growing's approach is uncharacteristically undeveloped here, as the trio never seems to know for what exactly what it's aiming.

Williams has figured out his sounds, but he’s still working towards his voice.

Guitars, synths, and beats all sound crisp and glisten with a layer of cold condensation, but they come together in ways that don't necessarily make for memorable pop tunes.

The EP's lackluster tracklist leaves iTunes Session seeming clunky and unrepresentative--like it's not a full set, but an excerpt from a larger show.

The more anthemic crowd-pleasing numbers littered throughout The Beginning Stages of the Polyphonic Spree boast such endlessly repeated refrains as "Hey/ It's the Sun/ And it makes me Shine," which lose a lot of their appeal when taken out of their natural habitat (the live setting) and placed between your headphones.

Sleepy Sun have learned the methods and studied the maps, but-- at least on record-- they've yet to take that knowledge into territory that feels new or, really, like it's their own.

Part of what makes listening to Light Asylum so frustrating is a nagging want to see her talent mobilized to the fullest, to roll up your sleeves and try to make a Light Asylum in your own image.

Dipping into her lower register, she stuns as a contralto. I found myself rewinding her runs on hymnal parts of “Heart on My Sleeve” and could’ve sworn I was levitating during the awe-inspiring bridge of “Pray It Away” and “Make It Look Easy.” ... The emotionally charged conversational interludes and narrative intros (“Do you ever wonder, like, who else is fucking your man?”) are out of place amid the redundant themes and mind-numbingly online songwriting.

The problem isn't that Valtari aspires to beauty, even if it's a commonplace, celestial understanding of it. Sigur Ros have proven they can make indelible music that's pretty and unpredictable, pretty and melodic, pretty and unnerving, pretty and inspiring. Valtari wants to be pretty and that's it.

Americana doesn't so much amount to a caustic commentary on the modern-day American condition as capture a bunch of old pals trying to rediscover their chemistry by sloppily jamming on some standards.

Icy and stiff has been the band's M.O., but its new material demands performances that command that sparseness rather than toy with it. Had the band drawn on some of that confidence from R&B as well as the instrumentation, it could have made this record even more compelling.

Though Cydonia is far from being a dull, sequencer-heavy Namlook ambient release, it regrettably sounds irrelevant in today's climate.

As Die Antwoord's energy level putters out, so too does Mount Ninji, an album too faded and immature to make a lasting dent on the face of hip-hop.

The Golden State band Golden Animals mine that particular epoch of mild psych and blues rock--especially the middle part, when 60s idealism gave way to the dope-daze haze of the 70s--for all it's worth on Free Your Mind and Win a Pony, the duo's solid enough debut.

A good listen to the album today reveals some ways it was ahead of its time.

The purest pop song is “Switch,” the one track that can pass for uptempo and boasts a hook that sticks. A few more fun moments like this would have helped keep the record moving.

The arrangements on PERSONA are busy and convoluted, and many lyrical highlights are buried in meta, self-referential schlock rock. ... PERSONA is not a failure, but it’s tough to call it a triumph.

His soft Ben Gibbard geekiness is an odd, if timely, fit for the swinging material, and flourishes of Jeff Buckley throat rattles don't help.

It's a true departure in sound and method; this is not a lazy or complacent record. McPhun, though, never settles into these new sounds, and Fight Softly retains very little of the ease and abandon that, to date, had marked the Ruby Suns.

It doesn't advance much on their debut and, like that record, it only intermittently allows their latent promise to creep to the fore.

Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors is on the one hand a genre-busting statement of artistic restlessness but it's also a mess.

After forty minutes of two-chord strumming, the band's unique approach becomes exhausting.

The problem with Buck the World is that it's largely inconsistent. There are 15 producers over 17 tracks. Sometimes it clicks, but other times it feels forced.

Like most of his recent records, it’s another collection of mostly very good Gucci Mane songs, marred by occasional awkward bits.

It [Mike Dean's "The Lure"], too, deserved a better show, and sets the tone for the songs to come, all sexual synth tracks that deploy dramatic minor chords to hint at a seamy undertone.

If few of these tracks could be called great, there aren't any terrible ones either-- the entire thing floats along nicely on a snug bed of cotton.

If you isolate any random 45 seconds of Directions to See a Ghost's 70 minutes, you'll definitely be compelled to listen for another few minutes--after which time you'll probably start waiting for a solo or a shift in tone that might not even come.

It's hard to miss the pressure the band was under to deliver here--it's nearly palpable in their overfed production and search for direction, and as a result, Odd Blood is a bit too much of not enough.

It'd be much easier to love, as opposed to merely like, They!Live's glistening, long-form tech-house soundscapes if there were more bombs and curveballs hidden amongst its lovingly pruned forest glades.

Creaturesque is an easy enough listen with a few moments that stand at attention, but even the best bits can't compare to Moonbeams', and the lesser stuff's far lesser indeed.

It's not a bad album by most standards-- in fact it's pretty good at points-- but in the end slides into a mire of adequacy after generating high expectations early on.

A good deal more Lange and a good deal less Muns would have brought out the best in Scott Herren.

[“Everything Good, Everything Right” is] a high point on an otherwise confused album that knows what it’s good at and what it’s not, and yet still chugs on anyway.

It is a bit ephemeral, but not quite as music to relax to--more like music to be bewildered by.

Ultimately this is a question of taste--and plenty of folks like their music slow-moving and somber--but the general avoidance of rhythm on some of these cuts poses a problem for me.

Bjorke is clearly an artist-producer who likes to put his finger in lots of different pies, and he should be commended for such restlessness and flexibility. Still, it would be nice to see him pursue some of these avenues a bit more thoroughly as opposed to cramming so many detours into one 48-minute trip.

Too often on Distant Relatives, Nas and Marley fall into a sort of middlebrow funk, kicking overripe platitudes over sunny session-musician lopes and letting their self-importance suffocate their personalities.

The deeply uncool Comedown Machine smacks of effort.... Still, the limitations of Comedown Machine's protracted diversity all come back to Casablancas, a man with wide range as a listener and extremely narrow range as a musician.

Goldstein's voice could use a little shaking up. Even in the first-person stories Goldstein feels like an observer, albeit one with a negative bias. Still, ARMS makes for an interesting contrast to Harlem Shakes' eternal optimism.

On repeated listens, the songwriting makes the album lukewarm.

Rocket Juice & the Moon feels like a decent record, but an unfocused, meandering one.

As a literary exercise, it’s convincing; as a listening one, it’s mixed.

Full of serious songs with sunny, heavily polished arrangements.

What mostly comes through on Dusty is what he’s already communicated, over and over again—he’s a technically accomplished rapper, and...well, that’s about it. If you’re looking for someone who will cram words like “hypotenuse” into verses, this is the album for you.

“Rats” and “Witch Image” get their strength from smoldering licks and stacked harmonies plucked from the Ozzy Osbourne playbook, providing metalheads with a welcome break from all the mid-tempo durdling. Given the unremarkable tracks that follow it--particularly “Helvetesfönster,” an ostentatious, baroque instrumental reminiscent of Medieval Times muzak--the latter might as well be the record’s closer.

What's ultimately confounding about the album is how one-note its euphoria can be. The songs are almost interchangeable; the lyrics rarely stray beyond the easy cliche,

It’s hard to say whether 2042 would be a more compelling record with more appropriate sequencing, or if this sprawling sixteen-track album would have made, perhaps, for a better set of separate EPs. What’s all too clear, unfortunately, is that 2042 stumbles precisely where Okereke has proven himself so capable of soaring.

Diehard fans of Goldfrapp will no doubt find something to love here, but for the rest of us, it’s a thin record that doesn’t do much to prop up its skeletal frame.

If Holy Motors are limited in range, they show genuine skill at bringing their one mood to vivid life.

No matter how much command and charisma Krauss brings to Texis, it still sounds quaint, not necessarily catchier than any number of contemporary bands who don’t face the same hang-ups from indie listeners.

Love Goes, Smith’s third album, unfortunately fails to deliver on the promise of “How Do You Sleep?” The album is clumsily split in two, with no regard to sequencing; it begins with a collection of bubbling, at times electric songs spanning melodic funk, pulsing deep-house, and mid-tempo pop, before abruptly veering to five messy ballads that would be better delivered via Hallmark card.

As a whole, Trendsetter is too wide-ranging and unfocused to scan as the proper debut she aspires for it to be. But when she does lock in, her mission couldn’t be clearer.

There's room for Smoke to grow into this new guise, but Wraetlic is too satisfied with its own dissatisfaction to serve as anything more than comfort food for those predisposed to melancholia.

Too often it sounds as though Beam is less interested in defining a new sound and more concerned with distancing himself from an old one.

Juice B Crypts is an act of overcompensation from a duo trying to make too much happen with less.

This odd and intermittently pleasurable artifact just kinda sits there, an unintentional rebuke to the artist that orphaned this poor thing.

There's no question that many of Lost Time's lyrics are funny, but the attitude that fueled NVM feels crushed. In both the vocal delivery and the driving guitars, the vibe is damper, the color somewhat drained.

The tracks here are supported by a fuller sound and more complex arrangements than on either of Travis' first two albums.... They're all competently played, but never really inspiring.

Make-Up is a Lie shows signs of progress and signs of regression; artful touches and clunking gaffs; soaring tunes and leaden lyrics.

What we’re left with on Dream World is a solid project that flies in multiple directions.

Cabello’s willingness to assist in [the music industry’s embrace of the “Latin” sound] caricature elsewhere distracts from the otherwise interesting Spanish-classical and Santana-esque riffs on Romance.

As with all documents by obsessives fixated on their targets, the album can be frequently ridiculous, mildly captivating, and occasionally repetitive, pocked by moments of goofiness that come from the runoff of a man eager to chase old miseries and find new ones to berate.

A case can be made that the 1978 world tour is the genesis of Dylan’s latter-day incarnation as a restless and mercurial road warrior. That knowledge doesn’t change that, as an album, The Complete Budokan 1978 isn’t just a drag, it’s often dorky, too.

At times it almost sounds as if they know they've taken their current sound as far as it can go and seem palpably frustrated they can't figure out their next move.

A radio edit of the title track tacked onto the end serves as an unintentional critique of Half a Human—it’s just too easy to remove the two minutes of synthesizer drift and end up with a perfectly enjoyable Real Estate song about the deceptive nature of passing time.

Memphis, their debut LP, bottles all of that up with remarkable skill, but often to disappointing effect. Its many flourishes are much more satisfying than its songs, each dissolving on contact no matter how much buoyancy or sugar they boast for stretches.

The songs on III seem to want to be simple folk songs. And unlike on previous albums, the players aren't always pushing each other higher into new celestial realms. Sometimes, they're just getting in each other's way.

This is such pretentious toss that I can't help but adore it.

Haven is no parody, nor is it a carelessly made record--it's simply a late entry that tugs the same strings, only to lesser effect.

Forever Is a Feeling turns the most transcendent, hopeful, horny moments of a young lover’s life into maddeningly safe background music. It’s so frustrating, you could scream.

There's nothing terribly new to the electro-psych sound he's worked up for himself-- it actually throws back quite a bit to the Roses-- but here he has a clutch of great melodies for him to hang his honey-dipped voice on, and he delivers those nicely.

Despite some strong ideas and a few memorable songs, Faded Seaside Glamour remains notable mostly for the vocals: the album's ups and downs follow Gilbert's voice almost exactly, best when he's hitting high notes, mundane when he's not.