Crime Cutz's weakness lies in its lack of diversity--you spend a lot of the record hoping for something to take them even further over the edge, but they continue to pull back until the very end.

When Silkjær traces his vocals over the lead guitars, it’s enough to make “Uncombed Hair” and “Pills” stick. Otherwise, A Youthful Dream can only push through its weaker melodies and reverb through self-will.

Head Over Heels might replace the duo’s trademark mannequin legs on the cover for their own, but these days such co-opting of realness is real meh. It’s genderfluid like a tech bro in a stunt romper drinking a Monster. The farce is strong with these ones.

It isn’t the strongest work from either artist, but the white EDM DJ turned rap producer and the face-tatted trap rapper from Watts make a good odd couple. ... The vibe is more couch potato than cinephile, and the tape works because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

Non-offensive, near-benign, and as if custom-built for the provocations of doing something else, Simulcast, like many Tycho works, is a reliably egoless experience, an art that approaches productivity-enhancing apparatus.

It’s exciting seeing how they’ve learned to play off of each other’s energy. It’d be easy for Uzi to coast and phone in verses after the year he’s had so far, but he’s shown no signs of slowing down.

Petrichor’s many quick pivots are almost guaranteed to provoke occasional frustration that Shake has seized upon a great idea and then let it go. Which tracks provoke it is a matter of taste.

For most of its 50-plus-minute runtime, Bieber appears, finally, entirely unencumbered. .... When Bieber dissociates into safe territory, alongside rappers Gunna, Sexyy Red, and Cash Cobain, on a trio of totally adequate but otherwise impersonal, paint-by-numbers R&B love songs, the specter of an algorithmic Spotify playlist looms. .... SWAG’s riskiest and most unexpected, are its most rewarding.

While it is certainly admirable that the Scissor Sisters' creative vision is strong enough that they sound very much like themselves no matter who they work with, they really could have used a strong push from their collaborators this time around.

There are easily as many misses as hits on the album, and 14 tracks is probably about seven tracks too long.

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.

The album is restrained, surprisingly low-key, and-- at its lowest points-- polite.

From the Valley to the Stars has hills that rise close to "El Perro del Mar's" peaks, and its cohesive vision is a pleasure to behold. At the same time, though, it harps on its themes with an overzealous single-mindedness, occasionally letting flimsy stuff support an overarching conceit that requires foundations of marble.

The band's saving grace is its commitment to and execution of its textural aesthetic, owing as much to David Lynch's oneiric odes to Los Angeles as any musical counterpart.

Artificial Sweeteners certainly isn't a terrible album, and it does the trick if you're just looking for a quick pick-me-up, but it leaves a bland aftertaste.

Throughout the album, Fuchs' playing is exemplary, but not in a showy or needlessly florid manner; he simply gets to work and gets the job done, content with being just one part of a greater whole.

The confidence in their new record is clear, if only because their vocals sound more boisterous than ever, but for the most part, the experimentation is the problem.

As appealing as it is challenging, Extended Vacation is the sort of album that might even make those Wilco fans who can sing only "Kingpin" believe it.

While it brandishes a certain kind of insular brilliance, it's music more ripe for conversation or think pieces than headphones or the living room hi-fi.

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

For every moment that Sov's supreme wit and impeccable cadence is fitfully showcased on Public Warning!, there is a moment when her gifts are squandered amidst anxious beats that try to compete with her huge personality.

Despite the Album Leaf's studied textures and buoyant songcraft, there is a crippling lack of tension inherent within Into the Blue Again's careful constructions.

Full of the kind of basic strum-alongs and diaristic musings that yield showers of Starbucks praise.

As beautifully assembled as parts of Seaside Rock are, a couple of genre-specific tracks underscore its stopgap nature.

These songs are fiercely internal, which also makes them remarkably hard to shake--here, Roberts is singing about the no-place of everyplace, the desolation we all know.

Regardless of the inconsistencies, The Ways We Separate still leaves its mark.

Given Ruppert's past predilection for dramatic singing, one would think his vocals would be a perfect match for these backing tracks. Unfortunately, he often doesn't rise to the challenge.

The looseness of Oblivion Hunter is a nice reminder that the core of their appeal isn't so much that they're pushing their sound into new places, but that they're two guys who can't hide how happy they are that they get to spend their lives making this kind of a racket.

On the whole, though, the women Craft expends so much breath obsessing over drift in and out of his songs like cardboard cutouts from a bygone era, there to be lusted after and then blamed when they don’t fit into his fantasy.

It’s remarkable how many of Scorpion’s 90 minutes are musically engaging. But the kind of juvenile navel-gazing that leads someone to write a line like, “She say do you love me, I tell her only partly/I only love my bed and my mama, I’m sorry” is less compelling when it’s coming from a 31-year-old father than a would-be college kid trying to make a name for himself.

It's a complete piece of work, and one that serves as a commentary on the intersectionality of art and fame by someone who has recently acquired a new level of notoriety. But the sacrifice here is the personal flair that gave her previous album a spark of creativity and set it apart from the songs she had already been writing for other pop stars.

Suitcase is crammed with classic Pollard moments-- those unique occasions where poorly-recorded, sloppily-delivered songs somehow become transcendent pop genius.... But perhaps the greatest problem with Suitcase is simply its size. At 100 songs, it's practically impossible to comprehend in one sitting.

Making the Saint is a refined yet minor record that works as an intimate aperture into the subtle wonders of Schlarb’s catalog.

It’s surprising how well the new sound works, though the voice of Skiba doesn’t always mesh comfortably with the production. As always, angst and unrequited affections are aplenty, but it all feels far too tame.

Too bad the songs aren't as adventurous as the music. This lack of songwriterly imagination severely limits the band's range.

Their spit-polished full-length is a throwback to the sort of CD-era pop rock album everyone remembers buying at least once: The one with the re-recorded single surrounded mostly by less-developed, vaguely similar stuff.

Siberia faithfully captures the wistfulness of the pilgrim’s journey--but it also suggests that the ears may be fickle traveling companions.

To catch a glimpse of these guys' past glories in 2009, your best option is still to go see them live; this is just a souvenir.

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 lack of any sort of critical thesis or undergirding may seem merely academic, but it translates into performances that are wanly reverent and unanimated, celebrating the music mainly for its age but not its actual history.

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They are a powerful outfit, and Subjective Concepts is cohesive and fierce.

Angels & Ghosts isn't a bad record, but it's frustratingly tepid.

It's just a return to very familiar territory without the urgency and mystery of Luscious Jackson's 90s-era music--the Lollapalooza Nation equivalent of, say, a new Winger or Y&T album. For the most part, it even sounds like it was fun to make; if only it were as much fun to hear.

Fec’s most disturbing songs were often his funniest, but Sweatbox Dynasty rarely allows Fec’s puckish side to rise from the muck.

As with previous albums, Yours Truly benefits from creative sequencing that winks at expectations.

Strange Weather, Isn't It?: you'll enjoy it plenty while it's on, but once it's over you might forget it ever existed.

Ultimately the music becomes another mask, another thing Barnes is trying to untangle, in a great chapter in the lengthy, wonderfully ornate Of Montreal compendium.

Every song on Scratch My Back, regardless of its original tone or meaning, is flattened out and turned into this one melodramatic and depressing thing, often with Gabriel whispering half the words to go with the ultra-slow tempos.

[It] comes off at first like slight pop-- novelty even. But extended listens reveal a goofy sincerity and romantic insouciance.

Apokalypsis turns out to be a kind of book completely different from what its cover promises.

Like many other major pop albums of the 2020s, it would have benefited from a careful edit and a more varied track order.

With their new album, Maxïmo Park avoid both utter disaster and absolute success by playing it safe. Nice and safe.

Hypnotic Nights continues with the Weezer worship introduced on 2011's We Are the Champions, but answers the fuzz-pop frivolity with equal doses of motorik groove and psychedelic drone.

Perhaps in the end they are simply too smitten with the idea of Smith as a beautifully doomed artist to create anything beyond a loving, reverent, and therefore sheepish tribute.

The idea is clever, and very Beck: a mix of the modern and the antiquated so fluid that you start to see how they're not that different to begin with. The execution feels out of his hands, and really, out of everyone's--just another project whose purpose seems lost in the labyrinth of production.

With so little added to the originals, you have to ask: Why do this? 'Cause it's good fun.

The constantly-disruptive feel of Hexadic makes it perhaps the most consistent Six Organs albums to date.

Wuthering Drum is a work seemingly unconcerned about giving you what you want, but what it does provide is almost enough.

The Adventures of Bobby Ray is a curiously lonely affair, the sound of a singular talent being drowned in a tidal wave of cheerful banality.

If Eyes Open lacks the vivacity of its breakthrough predecessor, it remains an assured example of a band still paying more than lip service to the notion of rock music as a vital pop form.

What ultimately saves Snowflake Midnight from following The Secret Migration up the band's collective keister is the song positioned to serve as its climax, 'Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower.'

Like all of his albums, Major Key is a mixed bag, fitting for a maestro who traffics in a blend of chest-thumping and humility that’s both as comical as it is prophetic.

Festival Thyme shows there's still enough fight in them to earn a reprieve.

The highlights of Ampexian suggest that if he did want to use the moniker for easier listening, the results would genuinely beguile, rather than demand your full attention and hope for the best.

OK Bear is a good album--it won't blow you away, but I get the sense from listening that Enigk is confident enough in his music not to need to blow you away.

The first half of Boys has all of the action, and the second side can't help but drag a bit.

Between the innocuously rambly music, Fite's toned-down vocal mannerisms, and this pencils-up-the-nose persona, Ain't is a record that's hard to dislike, but nearly impossible to imagine loving.

All he has to back himself up is the production. Yet even that is so safe. He waters down the cutting-edge sounds of the past and, in the process, flattens his Southerness to the point that he feels like he’s from nowhere.

The shadows its shape casts may not always create flattering silhouettes, but there's both comfort and anticipation to be found in knowing that Silver's constantly tweaking the lighting.

Trick is nice with atmosphere, but largely a non-entity when it comes to hooks.

Little Pop Rock's acid-casual serenades... could've featured on any Mary Chain album from Darklands onward. And that's a comment on both the songs' lack of deviation from the JAMC's Sunday-morning-Velvets songbook, and the songs' consistent quality and unhurried charm.

It's a cushy listen, if not only always distinctive, particularly since the shorter tracks often amount to a cooled, deep-blue gelatin that holds the previously released singles together.

Rather than stampeding recklessly forward on the heels of cataclysmic frontman Lee Spielman, Trash Talk have re-directed their energy into mountainous, pile-driving riffs that hit with a lowdown, deliberate force.

Little of Kintsugi gives the impression that Gibbard’s motivation to reboot Death Cab is matched by legitimate inspiration.

This is sparse, windswept music, full of warm, circling guitar plucks, gathering echoes, and long, slow fades.

Exquisite as a great deal of Lifetime of Love sounds, it is not an album especially rich in emotional depth or apparent meaning. Its merits, not to be shrugged off, are nevertheless mainly superficial—the slight but definite virtues of a decidedly minor record.

The spirit was willing, but the editorial hand, which could have redeemed the project by jettisoning the filler, was weak.

It's a nice flourish on an album with more than a few such moments, but they're not enough to make the Donkeys' nostalgia sound like more than a pose, or Living much more than dry and dull.

Toeing the line between artful restraint and playing it safe can be difficult, and despite the moments where Lion Babe gets it right, they have a long way to go to set the mood they’re so intent on finding.

Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire gleefully hits Efil4zaggin levels of expletives—his lyrics have always offered savvy political commentary and catharsis for those prepared to hear it.

It's easy to see Share the Joy's place in the Vivian Girls discography, but their place in indie rock as a whole is becoming less clear.

Diamond Hoo Ha does seem like an apt description of the glittery nonsense contained within.

Apart from those ['Hey Dad!,' 'World/Inferno vs. the End of the Evening,' 'Dead Sailors'] and the relatively slight 'Do We Not Live in Dreams?,' though, Major General hits some massive highs and nary a single crushing low.

Wayne has already done better versions of almost every song on I Am Not a Human Being, which was released on his 28th birthday last week. It's not exactly what we're looking for now.

So as good as it often is, Amnesty feels like a missed opportunity, the first safe album from an act that once would have recoiled at such a thought.

It’s that they’re one of many bands following this particular path and Dunes’ best hope is that you haven’t heard any of them yet.

Even with its generous supply of candy-coated riffs and easy-flowing melodies, Hot Cakes still goes down like lukewarm Eggo waffles: comfort-food familiar, but sapped of the frisson that made The Darkness special.

The good stuff aside, if hard whiskey, hard women and aboveground pools aren't your thing-- and I would imagine not-- it's tough to recommend Lucky 7.

If The Datsuns serve any purpose, it's to remind us that 70s glam/garage-rock was largely accountable for the abomination that was 80s hair-metal.

Walls is still a likeable and engaging album on the whole, but it's hard not to be a tad worried that An Horse's debut album began with a song where Cooper fiercely and endearingly sang, "And like that good Hole album/I can live through this," while its follow-up ends with a song where she mewls, "Ian Curtis said it would tear us apart."

A far greater number of these remixes flatten out the complexity of TKOL's grooves in favor of commonplace arrangements.

House of Spirits doesn't bring much in the way of sonic surprises beyond a few drum machines and synths, but it does find the band making subtle changes to its M.O., delivering a set of songs that's less urgent, but--in a freaky-yet-endearing way--more personal.

It can be exquisite in short bursts, but drags a bit over the course of this 16-track album, which is too homogenous in its dreamy, mid-tempo mood to justify its length.

If the Men’s earlier output showed how noisy garage-punk could be molded into accessible anthems, now they’re demonstrating how slick, ’80s-styled corporate rock can be repackaged as an underground DIY oddity.

So it's not the jaw-dropping affirmation of the Posies' non-break-up that we might have hoped for, but Every Kind of Light is ultimately a decent record spiked with a few classic moments of patent posies pop ecstasy.

Sonically rich but melodically staid, Corporate World ultimately brings to mind Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s extramusical affairs: alluring at first, but a bit wanting under the surface.

Mugison's vigorous showmanship--effectively conjuring the writhing, sweaty-browed anguish of a man of the cloth who's been caught in a by-the-hour motel with his pants down--isn't always enough to elevate his songs beyond genre exercises.