The new songs point in some directions Butler might go in the future: the raw heavy metal riffing of “Public Defender,” which is simultaneously bracing and ridiculous; the homemade ‘80s soundtrack rock of “Sun Comes Up,” which sounds like a Moroder sequencer held together by duct tape. But that quest for pure spontaneity can reveal the cracks in Butler’s craft.

Her voice and affectations are so guided by the heavy hands of Turner and Ford that Belladonna of Sadness is largely indistinguishable from their work: At best, Savior is a muse for her own introduction; at worst, she’s a conduit who’s yet to prove that she can hold her own with the company she keeps.

After the Balls Drop manages to make the most of these potential shortcomings, offering listeners a charming, warts-and-all portrait of the group.

If Bruiser's more straightforward rock turns mostly disappoint (one notable exception: the late-game adrenaline shot "Everybody's Under Your Spell"), the album does find the band showcasing its dynamic range in new and intriguing ways.

Son Lux’s avant-pop has always leaned more heavily on avant than pop, and Bones is probably too skittery for a breakout commercial hit (though “Change is Everything” could be a dark horse).

The overly fussy, played-too-safe System Preferences seems to be begging for a bit of Earlimart's old weirdness, an oddly placed bridge, a couple of bum notes, a "Burning the Cow", something. Without it, this record winds up feeling a little too perfect for its own good.

More deadening than the suffocating arrangements and production or the nonexistent hooks is a tiresome perspective that goes beyond the Weeknd and connects to a celebrated lineage of male authors who assume an inherent profundity in treating a psychosexual crisis of mid-twenties masculinity as miserably as possible.

It sounds like a home studio project, a whole album of ideas that sound almost-clever but go absolutely fucking nowhere.

Another album of somewhat charming and unexceptional tunes.

My biggest gripe about Lovage is that it finds a number of clearly talented artists constructing the same song continually without variation.

Memoryhouse have a ways to go before they're creating music with as much melodic power or depth of feeling as their dream-pop contemporaries.

Often he feels like a genre director hired for his reliability rather than excelling in his field. Still, there are advances here, a sense that Hill's VHS collection may have expanded beyond the horror section, a step up from pan-and-scan into something approaching widescreen.

Acoustic has all the ponderousness of a forgotten episode of MTV Unplugged, and that setting only highlights Band of Horses’ worst tendencies.

Future is YACHT's would-be critique of our pre-dystopian, post-Internet culture, but it rarely comes off as more than a charismatic cover band singing us yesterday's news.

Banned is stronger when the pair sound more invested, when the songs feel more composed and can unspool without as many distractions.

"Hey Ray" is a sore-thumb irritant on an EP that otherwise carefully mediates between Cale's populist and deviant tendencies.

Surfing troublingly ends with three plodding failures (including the seven-minute "Sayulita") that feel at odds with the record's fuck-all spirit.

SNOOP CUBE 40 $HORT is merely a good album on its own merits, which is not shocking at all to anyone who’s followed these rappers in their resting-on-laurels decades.

Far from aiming for some grand unified statement, The Mountain Will Fall feels a lot more like a DJ set--a curated grab bag of ideas that overlap and collide, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Richer Than I Ever Been is far from Ross’ most vital album, but few rappers can make what amounts to a status update feel like you’re right next to him, living out the story brick by brick.

The artistry of her voice lies in those moments of versatility and charisma, but they’re too isolated across Joyride to land with the kind of impact they deserve.

The Shabazz Palaces cut is easily the most interesting song here, and seems to be the one you might still be pulling out once in a while in another six months. Considering that the EP, with three versions of the same song in a row, isn’t really meant to be heard as a whole, getting one truly intriguing track out of it isn’t such a bad deal.

Wood$ does an excellent job of creating a chilled-out vibe--the kind of music that could soundtrack any setting, whether it’s time to club or wind down. That’s a fine quality to have, but there’s a sense that something deeper is tucked beneath the layers of his brand of trappy R&B.

Too many songs on Taiga come across as filler—too small and formulaic to impress at "taiga" scale, but too leaden to reach anthemic heights.

This is a singer's album, highlighting Hukkelberg's voice above all else.

With songwriting that veers between snoozy and face-palming, it's the kind of sophomore album that makes you question whether the debut deserved so much love in the first place.

While this is certainly not a great record, it probably has broader appeal.

So, it's plain that The Killers have made a record more concerned with artifice than artistry. If the intent is to place their album's principal teases on the next Now That's What I Call Music compilation, then bravo.

The rest of Dos can't quite keep the pulse of those initial salvos. Staying inventive within the confines of repetition is sometimes too much for the band to muster. But Johnson's fiery playing is impressive throughout.

Mostly, though, the LP does a good job keeping Gucci's culty selling points intact on a larger stage.

On an album full of radio experiments, some succeed--“100 Letters,” “Walls Could Talk” and “Alone” demonstrate the perennially fertile sound of alt-pop--and some inevitably fail.

Breakthrough-- which it is and isn't-- feels like the kind of record his adventurous precedent has made into a familiar signature. It's the album that gets at his recent creative mode most definitively, the one people might figure he had in him rather than the one that changed anybody's minds about him.

Far from being either vindicating or enthralling.

Long time fans will undoubtedly be delighted, but it's tough to predict if this record will inspire converts.

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.

The moments that work best are when the instrumentation and vocals distill singular, cohesive emotions. Her most literal lyrics are often the strongest.

There are still bands like Earlimart, quietly chugging away in Los Angeles and preserving the West Coast sound with a spirit that's more than just curatorial, as Mentor Tormentor elegantly shows.

He is still a charismatic performer and a naturally talented singer with a tone that can switch quickly from crystalline delivery to a rum-soaked rasp in his upper belt. When he channels the latter, The Romantic reaches its better moments. .... But even when the album finds its groove, it never really delivers the romance.

Huncho Jack’s liveliness tends to come from everywhere except Quavo and Travis Scott. The protean energy that buoy their respective works are sadly absent.

It's true that the new versions sound more modern and souped-up than the originals (which you also get if you buy the "deluxe edition" of Xscape), but their producers don't have enough distance from Jackson's presence to reframe his voice the way that, say, Junkie XL's remix of "A Little Less Conversation" reframed Elvis Presley's.

Butler’s commitment to the detached frontman where singing occurs barely or not at all robs songs of their emotional largesse, that basic thing we licensed to Arcade Fire and upon which their entire identity relies. What saving grace there is on Everything Now is scattered throughout its mercifully short 47 minutes.

Fatherland is a significantly simplified effort, a work of gentle, singer-songwriter consideration largely haunted by lost loves rendered as exactingly as still lifes.

At times, Film School achieve a foggy, grandiose psychedelia, but their compositions aren't always as shimmering as their production.

Sundark and Riverlight is like the thumbnail version: everything compressed, details lost.

La Sera's experiment with a new musical direction, line-up, and producer is by no means a failure, but, being the product of a logistical opportunity, comes across as more like a short stop on the way to something more solid and definitive.

Iggy's delivery is too wry to exude rage, the songs rarely rise above a mid-tempo chug, and Mackay's jovial sax blurts are way more roadhouse than Funhouse.

Without much variety to spice it up, the overall sluggardly pace is energy-sapping. An album of the sort of tracks on which Eskmo earned his reputation might not have gone amiss before he ventured a more songwriterly statement, but there's no reason he can't regroup and pull that off yet.

Highlights aside, Total's belligerence is as predictable as it is teeth-grinding.

Ultimately, the trip they're taking us on isn't into America, but into the past, and they show too much reverence for their forebears.

It displays the boundlessness of her vocal talent but finds her tethered to a frustratingly limited aesthetic.

The Massacre's best tracks have 50 dropping club-clatter and gangster lean to show us the mind behind the six-pack, gat, and Teflon.

It's weirdly kind of a grower. There's nothing that immediately jumps out and announces itself as the 'Where Do You Run' of Everything Goes Wrong.

Dalley possesses neither heart nor soul as a lead vocalist, and his milk-warm emotional outpouring of tiresome, overwrought subject matter could get lost in a crowd of two.

Obviously, Twista's not breaking down any walls with his wordplay on Kamikaze, but along the way he kicks over a few garbage cans while letting Kanye West, Toxic and the rest of his production crew move some crowds and elevate their status, one slow jam at a time.

Tired riffing, uninspired lyrics, and god-awful wankery.

Mixing downtempo with trip-hop and some samples from a funky-ass toolbox (where you keep your funky-ass tools, of course), Pepé Deluxe seem to have struck upon a recipe for success.

The “Dimension Dive” tracks sometimes sound like they belong on a different record altogether, although taken in the grab-bag context of Savage Imagination it just about works. It’s just that elsewhere there’s a more coherent flow from one change to the next.

The untangled pop of In and Out of Control has been reconfigured and dipped in black eyeliner as the Raveonettes veer toward 1980s goth.

The group's size makes the white-robed hordes of Polyphonic Spree an obvious comparison, but I'm From Barcelona's taut songwriting renders their numbers largely incidental-- these songs were meant to be shared by many voices.

Z's biggest problem is that, despite choosing a sound that is soft and somnolent, SZA is too often overpowered by the music.

Moments with genuine heart and drive are too often spoiled by overeager schmaltz. The raps on Roses are fleeting compared to previous projects, and while K.R.I.T. has proven many times that he can carry a tune, the album suffers when he shifts gears completely.

Picture, the more ambitious of the pair, simply sounds unfocused, overly concerned with effects and production--with moments and sounds--than with songs or overall shape.

Each of the 11 songs here are positioned at some point in an endless cycle of going out, scoping girls, getting drunk, making out, passing out, and “waking up in [your] clothes.” But for Skaters, such scenes are apparently so routine that they often sound disinterested in their own debauchery.

There are plenty of signs that UUVVWWZ are on track to become a better band, but "Castle" is the song that will make you impatient for them to hurry up and get to their next level right away.

What frustrates about The Beautiful Struggle is that its flaws are purely musical: Kweli remains the fist-raising visionary who burned "The Manifesto" at the Lyricist Lounge with the same fiery pen that blazed "African Lounge".

Outside is a fine but ultimately feckless return to form, an attempt to rebuild The Loon's simple charms.

Brass is certainly an easier record to wrap your mind around than Flux Outside. But, with one too many good-not-great melodies and that nagging sense that these guys are holding something back, it's also a whole lot less likely to get itself lodged in your skull.

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

While it's nice to finally hear these two follow up on a promising debut, Hymns isn't likely to capture many people who weren't taken with the original Cardinal record.

Money is no less creative or searching than Skeletons' previous works, but it trades too many of their fantastical charms for scurrying reality.

This is an album that suffers in the context of Fink's career. She is an obviously talented artist working well below the standards she's set for herself as both one half of Azure Ray and a solo artist, and if that makes for a disappointing album.

Johnston devotees will get a kick out of it, for sure--out of the successful merging of Johnston and a rich, full-band aesthetic, and just out of the sound of Johnston doing well and writing well, finally rocking out on the wide screen he's usually had to imagine.

Racy is big, it’s bold, and positions its creators closer to "pop", only to reveal them as a pop band by context rather than nature.

His second album, Weird!, feels like an ode to his audience of self-identified misfits, but it isn’t as boundary-pushing as his look—and too often, it’s a shallow imitation of more popular songs you’re already tired of. Pop-punk isn’t dead, but Yungblud’s charm gets buried.

The Airborne Toxic Event is an album that's almost insulting in its unoriginality.

When they wanted, Múm could already do abstractly affecting without also tipping into cloying sentimentality. But since the bulk of the compilation is so second-rate and saccharine, an obvious learning experience put on tape, Early Birds is inessential.

Pale Fire doesn't command your attention so much as wait patiently until it drifts into your view and then goes away.

The result of Ounsworth bottling this "flow" and working it into a set of songs is an album that showcases the breadth of his talents much more than the limited palettes of Flashy Python or CYHSY.

While Violens may know their sonic touchstones inside and out, they're better sticking to the haircut-obsessed sounds showcased on Amoral's standouts.

It's not so much that Rock N Roll is incorrigibly written as that the record is unforgivably careless, unwilling to commit to anything including itself.

Thankfully, the band is up to the challenge of turning up the spotlights and the volume, and they crank out a solid batch of insanely catchy, pristine pop songs that'll crawl inside your brain and die there, only to come back and haunt you at the oddest times.

Elephant Jokes just has a good feeling about it, as if Pollard really liked this batch, so that's why he deigned to play an instrument on it, maybe, and why he slips a little intro in and closes it out with the very final-sounding 'Architectural Nightmare Man.'

For some reason—fear of boring his fans, obedience to the preferences of the streaming services, a career focused on club bangers—Malone won’t let these songs breathe. The result is an album that’s overstuffed and undercooked.

Notes and the Like is par-for-the-course lap-pop.

Wauters has always seemed breezy but never quite so meek.

Mura Masa is best when he sticks to the script and cranks up the heat.

One can't shake the feeling that formula is what's really at the heart of the record, and in light of the promise shown by their debut, that lack of fervor and off-the-cuff adventurousness is a difficult shortcoming to ignore.

I Said I Love You First is quite scattershot, an odd collection of songs that sound like other songs, incongruous spoken interludes, and one random reggaeton track (“I Can’t Get Enough”) first released in 2019.

The elements of pastiche are woven smoothly into her sound, which dances gracefully on the edges of past and present, of waking life and dreams.

While some of the production on Piss in the Wind feels like an upgrade, the core issue with Joji’s songwriting remains: He never offers much of a window into his emotions.

Like the best work of its participants, Beast Moans is no pornographer's rubdown; it delivers on its tease.

But with only two weak tracks and some deletable skits outweighed by a dozen good-to-great cuts, Everywhere at Once is one of the best albums to come from a Solesides alumnus in a long time.

White Women is the closest Chromeo have come yet to fully realizing their sound, but it's also far from perfect.

In other words, Fool's Gold made a Foreign Born record.

The trouble with World of Joy isn’t that it’s bad, but that it seems perfectly content to stop short at “pretty good.”

An album that’s disorienting at its catchiest, harrowing at its ugliest, and more than willing to run both of those modes at the same time.

Taken as a whole, it’s hard to imagine the audience who enjoys every corner of this album. It’s even harder to imagine the artist Morris really wants to be.