Calling them wack MCs isn't saying much though--they're the only MCs of their kind, competing only against themselves. No wonder they make music that sounds like it was made in a void: heart in the right place, perforated with off-key singing and C-grade rapping.

Repo is still abstract in a similar and smeary way, but it sounds like Black Dice have gotten a better handle on their gear.

There's no shame in catchy, concise, sharply executed tunes that communicate mildly fresh takes on relationships, either -- and this album has more than a few.

Nothing here sounds like it's been fully thought out or planned, and Songbird sounds all the better for it.

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

The problem with Radlands is that, armed with the potential to go wild with a new bag of tricks, Mystery Jets often become as conservatively minded as parts of the state whose outline graces the album's cover.

There are moments of clarity when the band sounds fantastic, but they're not enough to save the record from landing in the band's forget pile.

Their personality-bereft voices take on a chameleonic quality in which, when surrounded by the accompanying music, they eventually become nothing at all.

The album’s stationary sound and glacial pace, ironically, make it a more demanding listen than Dirty Beaches’ more outwardly confrontational, punk-inspired previous releases.

On Bell House, it’s sometimes hard to tell when the band is being too precious and when it’s consciously using self-deprecating humor to subvert that self-seriousness.

There may be six different versions of Lauv pulling the strings, but in the end, they all sound alike.

Dark Hearts is best at its most artificial. The moments that aim for “realness” seem less so.

That the Watson Twins blend seamlessly into these backdrops, however, is far from a compliment. Of course it's lovely to an extent when the girls harmonize, but neither owns a voice strong enough to convey much besides a languid aridity.

Do they embarrass themselves? Not in the least. But they do raise the question of why this album even needs to be heard outside the band themselves, and why it should be in stores.

It might be hasty to applaud a return to form for an artist who's spent the past few years coming to terms with what that form's supposed to even mean. But it's still great to hear what Wiley can do when left to his own devices.

It's difficult to slag a folk album for being unoriginal, but the letdown here is that Milkwhite Sheets sounds uninspired at a time when so many musicians are digging treasure from the same ancient, mist-shrouded hills.

As good as "Cable TV" and "Winter, That's All" sound, John Shade's main weakness was supposed to be its strength-- during the points where the tempo dies down and the songwriting hues closer to traditional forms, there's not enough personality or character in the vocals to compensate, leading to stretches of indie promo-pile filler.

So Barking stays the course, with the added prospect of a fitter, happier Underworld on the horizon. It's about time.

MC4 falls short of Wave Gods, but is a leaps-and-bounds improvement over Excuse My French.

It's so clinical that it works better as an audition reel for their next round of features than it does its own statement.

Dream House forsakes even the grandiose manipulations of their EPs for a placid, empty surface. It looks good on paper. It will sound nice while you cook dinner. Then you’ll forget you ever heard it.

Ramshackle, jumpy and curiously charming, Dead Man Shake is full of Westerberg's trademark spastic vocals and nimble guitar work, only now determinably fuzzed up and shrouded in Sun Records spunk.

Like their revivalist peers, Cave Singers aren't reinventing a genre here, but they lend their local folkie scene a welcome dark side, and No Witch is their strongest album yet.

There’s nothing here that touches the band’s creative peak--and, honestly, even the best of these nine songs falter next to Wonky’s highs--but there’s just enough pleasure to be gained on Monsters Exist to justify the album as a worthwhile endeavor.

WUNNA is more than an endless barrage of boasts about his designer clothes and foreign whips; the flows are crisper, his puns are more colorful, and the beats are pristine.

Watch Me Dance doesn't reconcile the clash between retro and modernism, but at least it does the past a decent amount of justice.

Re-Up Gang is sort of like going out for a nice meal and filling up on bread.

Radiant Door is exactly as its title suggests--the brighter side of one of America's best psych-pop bands.

Hazed Dream has some heady moments--the languid guitar intro to "Incense Head" and the head-nodding chords of "Mexican Wedding"--but the songs are just too mellow, understated, and lyrically anonymous to move the needle much.

It's obvious that Hi Beams was meant to be a candy-colored experience, but instead of inducing a sugar rush, it results in little more than a fitful stomach ache.

Full of baloney The Versions isn’t. But its muted—and sometimes rather predictable—approach only occasionally gets close to capturing the erratic wonder of Neneh Cherry in full flight.

The depth and breadth of the tracklist are commendable but often work against the band.

Tennant's mature gift as a lyricist is for sentimentality tempered by slyness, and he pulls that off a few times... Too much of Elysium, though, misplaces its subtlety.

It’s Surfer Blood’s first album since their debut that doesn’t invite you to think about what could have been. It simply makes the most of what is.

WHY? has never been a subtle band, but they’ve also never been this overwrought.

At least he hasn't lost his wry sense of humor. But about this newfound singing business: Argos has discovered a voice that sounds a bit like Jarvis Cocker's, only if he'd lost it after a long night out drinking-- a little hoarse, whispering low so as not to upset the hangover.

These aren't songs meant to jump out at you, but spend some time with them and little illuminations flicker to life.

It's an unrefined, poorly calculated mess.

Although it's unlikely that Stuart David will ever become as gifted a songwriter as Stuart Murdoch, he's crafted a distinctive sound with this band. The Geometrid serves as a charming, if slight, pleasure, but with more time to devote to the project, Looper may yet create a more substantial sound.

The distraction of blatant unoriginality aside, Rare Forms' biggest problem is its lack of compelling structure, with a whole lot of atmospheric haze.

The-Dream's deft "That's My Shit" is a return to that just-right poise of the serious and silly.... The rest of The Crown EP does not thread the needle quite so gracefully.

The best moments all come courtesy of his guests. ... While Rich the Kid busily squanders goodwill, what a more engrossing rapper might have made of it.

Too often on Port of Miami 2, he locks into the flow of least resistance and simply lets it ride, hiding behind his production instead of asserting his dominion over it. And while his music remains sumptuous as always, that luster alone is no longer enough to wow.

Even at their best, though, Noah and the Whale struggle to overcome a trying-too-hard odor that permeates everything they do right down to that ill-advised band name.

The long list of guests here indicates a record in need of some padding, but most of these names provide little more than hook fodder.

If Circus isn't a front-to-back triumph, it's got enough juice in it to forgive the occasional misfire.

A Hundred Million Suns is rife with the sense of a band striving to be taken more seriously, whether through rocking more manfully, displaying a more sophisticated subtlety, or simply stringing together three ponderous, already-overlong songs and calling the impenetrable result a 16-minute stand-alone epic.

On Deceiver of the Gods, they are satisfied with plugging 10 new anecdotes into 10 songs they’ve made before and, unfortunately, will most likely make again.

For all its blatantly ill-conceived moments, there's something charming about the sheer audacity of Derulo's often bizarre choices. Even when it falls flat, there is character here.

While Cosentino is anxious to figure out who she’s become, Fade Away points to how strong she’s been all along.

inc. is both faithful to its source material and clever enough to twist it into new shapes, but at least for the time being, no world is unlikely to bring the Ageds out of the shadows.

The nine tracks that made up The Arizona Record are more satisfying on their own.

It's possible that the cumulative deadening effect of Miracle Mile is intentional, or that the contrast between the vacuous music and the spiritual ennui of the lyrics is supposed to be ironic. But Miracle Mile doesn't seem smart enough, musically or lyrically, for that to be the case.

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.

More than a stocking stuffer but less than an idol, Rihanna has grown into one of the most reliable pop stars we've got.

This generation-crossing collaboration feels like a record lodged in a sort of chronological rut, one where a young artist fronts an old-sounding record that sounds like it could've been released at any point in his lifetime--and helmed by any number of MCs that could've sounded like him.

The brio of an amateur would almost have to be preferably to the overzealous professionalism of Beautiful Lie, whose frilly "classicist" pop gets all dressed up to go absolutely nowhere.

It's a series of vignettes and at its best it reminds me of amorphous copy/paste artists like Prefuse 73, musicians who wormed their way into a genre by nibbling at its edges.

Love Sign's belief in the righteousness of its intentionally big, dumb songs being big, dumb and nothing else ultimately sets Free Energy up to fail.

Action Adventure captures broad feelings of nostalgia from a POV enriched by decades of hindsight and experience; it’s a testament to DJ Shadow’s production skill and human touch. But where his last album used pointed commentary to communicate a clear concept, the new album’s instrumental abstraction is more elusive.

Instead of growing soft and slick while retaining their songwriting prowess, they’ve stayed fast and raw--but left much of their popcraft somewhere behind.

The droning effect of the guitars-- all that static strumming-- might be more effective if they didn't sound so rounded-off and sanded down into a blur. It saps the life out of the songs, which come off more drab than they should.

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.

What it lacks in a unified style it makes up for in a referential (and reverential) enthusiasm that anyone with a subscription to Wax Poetics should recognize as an individualized, well-crafted love letter to funk gone by--and funk yet to come.

Some of these remixes are truly excellent, and some of them are disastrous.

Beautysleep's weakness is that so many songs are pretty instead of awe-inspiring-- that she gives us only a little greatness.

All I Need had the potential to be so much more than mediocre and forgettable.

The Ornament's expansiveness owes a fair bit to Olsen's voice, which sounds like it's been given an emotional B12 shot. His lyrics are prettily--albeit somewhat emptily-- evocative, richly textured, and his tonal pronunciation (the "PO-lice cars" of "Hanging Window") adds temporal sentimentality to his words.

Temples are clearly skilled technicians; they probably could’ve produced this record in their sleep. What’s frustrating is that the project begins and ends at talent. These songs are hollow; you could listen to Hot Motion half a dozen times and feel nothing.

An unwelcome presence, Morello is simply the most obvious of many elements on High Hopes that just don’t work. It’s all the more unfortunate given that there are actually some redeemable songs here, along with some brief glimpses of Springsteen the rock'n'roll storyteller.

Even though the record is irresistible at times, it's also a feedback loop of nostalgia that's creaking as it turns.

As the geometric tones of closer “Take Me to Your Leader” blip and fold into themselves, it becomes clear that, short as it is, Exotic Birds of Prey still has the loose and expansive feel of a radio show. There’s no easier way to visit outer space.

Though The People's Record contains some of the best music of Club 8's career, it doesn't hold up well as a complete album. There are no outright duds, but the sequence is front-loaded to such a degree that there is an obvious drop-off in quality by the middle of the set.

All Harm Ends Here is hushed and apocryphal, but at times it sounds almost as half-hearted as it is heavy-hearted.

This is a subtle refraction of the Ducktails aesthetic, where the brittle abstraction and detours down lo-fi cul-de-sacs are siphoned into songs that are breezier, less inward looking, more in thrall to the possibilities of pop.

Much of this material is short and fragmented, creating moments that flicker into life then vanish before achieving full impact.

2014 Forest Hills Drive is a decent album selling itself as great. It wraps itself in the garments of a classic, but you can see that the tailoring is off.

One of the most annoying records you're liable to remember.

This soundtrack is a nice surprise, exceeding expectations when it eschews the expected.

With only six songs on offer--one of which is a 75-second interlude called 'The Curlew'--it's hard to feel like this is the assertive, confident statement Fake has it in him to make. As a strategic move out from the ghetto of nostalgic IDM Nowheresville, though, it'll suit just fine.

The underlying problem here seems to be that Hebden still isn't comfortable in his own skin while improvising, with Reid or otherwise.

The album sounds exactly, defiantly like Mariah, acknowledging her place in the pop ecosystem both implicitly and explicitly without chomping at the bit.

A couple of really cool parts, and the rest I don't feel so bad for forgetting.

Perhaps it's partly a factor of Oberst's essential attention-grabbing nature, but none of these gentlemen offers up a composition that snags the ear better than the most mundane effort from their fearless leader.

Eternal Youth feels like more of a lackluster stopgap than equal-footing sidecar for Merritt's songcraft, a frustrating teaser from the Merritt portfolio of aliases.

An acceptably underwhelming, state of the art, guitar-centric pop record.

Their penchant to recreate the music they love leaves little room for innovation, and ultimately the album has the freshness of an unearthed time capsule.

White Rose Movement's "electro-clash" 80s sound basically candy-coats Nine Inch Nails industrial and metrosexualizes the lyrics, making Kick pretty redundant.

For those who like their music brief and stupid-simple (and appreciate the various strains of the punk canon Mika Miko are drawing upon), We Be Xuxa can be plenty of fun.

Pop singers certainly don't need to reinvent music production to be gripping, but Esser's debut doesn't strain or stretch creative boundaries or hit that perfect balance between playful and experimental in the same way that contemporaries like Micachu and the Shapes do.

You see, as Swords, mopping up of the stray B-sides and bonus tracks from the comeback years, suggests, Morrissey now has a dilemma: Following group glory, solo vindication, political notoriety, sullen exile, and dramatic revival, what on earth does he do for an encore?

I can't deny Church is a solid craftsman capable of cranking out extremely inviting pop-rock hooks, but this ground is so well-trod that it's hard to find anything to get even a little bit excited about here unless you're relatively new to indie-rock patronage.

There aren't many hooks on this record, and the tempo shifts are sometimes subtle, so it can feel overwhelming-- kind of a constant onslaught of sound. This is a taste issue, but if you require a respite now and again, it might be a difficult listen.

When this sound is done with edge and freakiness, it can be a unique surprise, which is exactly what You Think You Really Know Me was. Electric Endicott is too often the opposite--predictable and numbing, even when it's good.

Player Piano finds Hawk more concentrated and economical than ever. Unfortunately, it comes off more like complacency than conviction, that Hawk's either holding back on us, misreading his true strengths, not recognizing the need to rise to the occasion, or possibly all three.

It's all lovely and certainly more immediately engaging and compact than Jónsi's mostly-instrumental Riceboy Sleeps multimedia project from 2009.

This is a record with a handful of standout songs struggling and straining against one another after being crammed into the standard album format.

The richly produced, melodically generous Candy Salad is plenty to chew on, but one can't help wishing its songs could be as vibrant as its sounds.