Even if their whole style is essentially a throwback, there's plenty of room out there for throwback done right. But on too much of Youth and Lightness, they're not the machine they could be.

He’s making songs that sound like catchy Gunna songs of the past—he’s still able to float on these laid-back, skittering ATL trap variants while reading straight off his SSENSE receipt—but they don’t feel like them.

Many of Glow's songs are just-there, but a few manage to be engaging.

There’s a very palatable poppy sheen on all of these tracks: Glitterbug is packed with anthemic hooks and synth pulses that sound like they were composed solely to lure Lexus.

When the recycled smoke clears, Little Barrie could use more songwriting help from their patrons (Moz, [Edwyn] Collins) and less hu-huh inspiration from Ocean Colour Scene's lobotomy-trad bong.

Blue Madonna’s main value over replacement synth-pop is his falsetto, capable of reaching a glam-rock frenzy but constrained in songs that never quite allow him to go there.

A covers album like Jukebox should reveal new facets of a performer in its selection and interpretation of favorite songs. That's how (and why) "The Covers Record" worked. But eight years later, only 'Song for Bobby' tells us anything new about Chan Marshall. The rest of Jukebox doesn't even say much about Cat Power.

For a record so bent on impressing the listener, Culture of Volume somehow never manages to leave a mark.

There's something bold in the smaller scope of The Endless River, but it proves to be one of the few Pink Floyd releases that sounds like a step backwards, with nothing new to say and no new frontiers to explore.

Smile asks less of us. The confessions on this album feel like calculated dodges, every tepid disclosure immediately followed by triumph. ... Despite all her garbled platitudes, she remains a master at executing proven chart-topping formulas.

If in the past [Fallon] managed to transform similar icons [Ginsberg, Van Morrison] into a communal mythology, here it too often sounds like regurgitation, as though the reference were an end in itself.

But even with 9th's craftsmanship, the melodies, like Buckshot's lyrics are vacuum-sealed. There's a pianissimo modesty that positively sucks the album dry.

At their best, they achieve late-’90s VH1 rock heights, which is not such a bad target to hit. ... At their worst, they’re affected and not in an interesting way. But these are both extremes, on a record otherwise scrupulous to never sound at all extreme.

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.

For an EP as flat and, well, just plain stuck as Our Love Is Hurting Us sounds, playing catch-up would've been preferable to taking a promising but not wholly memorable debut and simply offering it up a second time

The quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamics and turgid crunch taste and feel just like middle school. And even if that weren't the case, it's safe to say we've heard aches like just these before.

DEADLINE achieves the bare minimum, but instead of being a show of style and substance, its music and credits—Diplo, Chris Martin, Dr. Luke—come across more like a demonstration of A-list power.

Every song here sounds expensive, and would play exquisitely on enormous sound systems. But that imbalance, between the level of production and substance, means all the SFX and sonic wizardry of CCCLX can feel a little brainless.

These songs rarely sound lived in or personable; rather, they're more like museum dioramas where he can pose figures like Calamity Jane, Casey Jones, and Casey at the Bat in stiff tableaux.

While this LP is more painstaking than B'Day, the extra effort dulls any emotional wallop; "B'Day," in all its hectic glory, offered a much more vivid peek into the elusive mind of Beyoncé than Sasha Fierce, which often reads more like projection than reality.

Problem is, the more traditionally reflective Grace/Wastelands just manages to make his solipsism double over on itself and your memories of listening to "Up the Bracket" are more rewarding than his memories of making it.

There's a lot of remarkable music on Celebration--the work of an artist who's spent a quarter-century in a passionate body-lock with the question of what exactly makes pop music popular. She deserves a retrospective more interesting than this haphazard piece of contract-filling product.

Wayward Fire continually misses a sweet spot between being lean and dirty enough to aerodynamically groove and being maximalist to the point where it opts out of that mode completely. And as a result, there's always that one last addition to the mix that sticks in your craw.

Despite the overcooked jumble of your typical oft-delayed all-star concept record, it really does fall together as pure music. Just stop paying too much attention to Del's lyrics.

Nothing here is unforgettable or in danger of replacing its original. The arrangements are formulaic, regressing back to the stripped-down candlelit era of the original MTV’s Unplugged. At worst, Songs of Surrender is an overindulgence. At best, it’s a pleasant interlude.

In the Hollows never feels lived-in, or more generously, part of the reality Baldwin has found and written into these songs. The exception comes with the title cut, the record’s biggest production and the most anomalous and audacious pop anthem of Baldwin’s career.

With these songs, you can hear the love letter to aughts rap-rock that Bear aimed for, not a misguided attempt at catering to Fortnite players. Unfortunately, most of Hole Erth comes across like the latter.

Too often, Lord's approach to her lyrics is overly reverent, to the detriment of the music itself.

A few songs are some of Morrissey’s most engaging, exciting work of the 21st century. Other songs get your attention for the wrong reasons. ... His political musings all arrive with a crushing lack of subtlety or nuance.

There's isn't much in the way of clues as to why they wrote and recorded in secret, but this, their debut, sounds like an album that wasn't yet ready to be heard. It is beautifully crafted and rich in demure detail, but Street of the Love of Days is largely bereft of energy or direction.

Although there will always be certain comfort in Margo Timmins' voice, her limitations are frustrating.

It starts strong (with the pensive 'Honor Wishes'), and ends on a high note (with the title track leading into 'To America,' Wasser's duet with Wainwright). Unfortunately, the middle of the album, burdened with turgid low points.

The progression from early singles to first album isn’t nearly the same arc as it was just 10 years ago, but it’s still weird that the first full-length showcase for Skrillex as self-contained album artist feels more like a transitional record than a debut that plays to his strengths.

Dreamland falls prey to the unfortunate mode of modern branding that conflates personal nostalgia with making a point. Glass Animals want to talk about The Way We Live, when it’s really just Let’s Remember Some Stuff.

It's a singular sound that's as trying as any of the year's scarier noise records, but it's also uncompromising: a pop-music dealbreaker, even for fiscally responsible, architecturally dashing electro-pop.

Outer, fittingly enough, projects its energies relentlessly outward, broadcasting its emotional content in a way that too often feels heavy-handed.

It is hard not to be a little dismayed to see that Efterklang have settled for what is likely the least daring--if perhaps not the least lucrative--path going forward.

It's the Brian Jonestown Massacre album that's the least informed by the usual parade of 1960s mod/psych influences, opting instead for flirtations with disco rhythms, drum loops, boom-box beats and house-diva wails. In a sense, Newcombe has simply replaced one form of repetition (droning/jangly guitar jams) for another (dance workouts).

Unfortunately, Inherit tries to give the listener both of these great tastes at once, resulting in a combination that's less like chocolate and peanut butter, and more like toothpaste and orange juice.

Even at its most outrageous, Princess of Power suffers less from silliness than from safeness.

They try to create atmosphere in an airlock, lumbering instead of fostering groove, failing to generate any heat or friction as nearly every interesting turn on these songs happens within the first minute.

It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know about Cash in his final months, nor does it sound like an attempt to re-brand an icon or re-shape a legacy.

By the fourth or fifth trip through Gensho, the idea begins to slip into pure gimmickry, as though this were a notion that sounded fun for old friends to try but isn't so fun to hear.

Adiós doesn't add much to Campbell’s legacy--the comeback records of recent years formed a fitting final act--but it’s a pleasant postscript, a wistful reminder of the joys a great musician once gave.

This might be her least distinguished set of songs to date, relying too heavily on cliché (“I’m flying without even trying”) and vague, pat sentiment (“Sometimes it doesn’t come together ’til it breaks”).

Tyler Ballgame has a special voice; he just hasn’t yet made it distinct.

Most of LIVE LIFE FAST plays out with this kind of energy: forced, obvious, its best ideas obscured in a haze of self-satisfaction.

Gentlemen's about as interesting as middling Pollard records get, but it's middling all the same, a fittingly abnormal end to a most unusual year.

The problem is that while Hourglass has Gahan sounding a lot more assured and competent as a songwriter, it's also too much what you'd expect of him.

Ra Ra Riot sound overly self-conscious, the rural environs of their recording space failing to provide the warmth, empathy, or exuberance of The Rhumb Line.

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 problem with Chapter II is that even the album’s high points are only just good, when the dubstep world has reasonably come to expect great things from Benga.

The music is big but gentle, offered without tension or anger. When it is not big-- see the leaden sentiment of "You Make Me Feel" and "Delicately"-- it is laughably composed and calculating.

Corgan settles for an album that’s tastefully cordial but about as suspenseful as a round of bumper bowling. There are a few moments when everything clicks, when the passive pleasantness gives way to active pleasure, most of them involving a smartly deployed string quartet.

Every synth setting and drum sound and vocal technique on I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat is a pastiche of a sort of thing you've heard before.

No amount of boulder-sized low-end can disguise the fact that, even when these tracks work, they usually feel like they're missing something major. And that something is a vocalist.

Ooey Gooey is a proof-of-concept album--yes, the Dirtbombs can Dirtbombify this ordinarily unscuzzy genre, too--rather than one that plays to the band's considerable strengths.

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.

Only staunch Volta cultists would claim every minute of Xenophanes is worth your precious leisure time. But damn if the best bits don't make an excellent in-car soundtrack for pretending you're on your way to something more dramatic than your day job.

Most of it dips into detached terrain; the manic piano runs of “World Three” are rendered without drums, and the layered buildup on “Dissolver” is executed in such a precise manner that it’s positively suffocating in its rigidity.

The impulse to luxuriate in despair, to find the lushness in it, rather than shut it down and shove it away. He does that well on Everything Was Beautiful, but he’s already done it better.

The band’s songwriting chops are evident on Between Places, and it’s refreshing for a debut to err on the side of being too ambitious, when so many new indie bands nowadays suffer from the opposite problem. But the content of these songs doesn’t quite earn their epic execution.

Though there's a nice sense of humor throughout, there's just not enough meat on the bone to inspire any sort of real investment in the majority of these songs.

As much as the record flirts with reinvention—personal, political, musical--its modest ambition sounds exactly like complacency.

Unfortunately, Fat Dog’s debut slumps right in that tepid puddle, weighed down by gimmicks, cheap irony, and unearned mythology. Rather than stoking rapture or rage, it prods with hollow indifference. More a whimper than a woof.

It's not clear what Tanton wanted this album to be... It's a loose collection of whims and desires, unrolled over vast expanses of terrain that Tanton could survey for a while to see how they fit.

The problem is that the strangely smug We Don't Even Live Here feels more like P.O.S. preaching to the converted than attempting to make a believer out of anyone, lacking any palpable resistance necessary to justify the constant underdog pose.

The best moments on Up and Away reinforce what’s missing in the worst ones.

Enough happens musically on The Hazards of Love that I can still see it being fun for fans in a live setting, especially if you know the lyrics. On disc, though, it's largely missing the catchy choruses and verisimilar emotions that previously served as ballast for the Decemberists' gaudy eccentricities.

Their weakest record to date, one that lacks the subtle power and distinctive personality of their best work.

Now, she is after a larger quarry: the contemporary chamber ensemble. But she does not quite capture it on The Clearing.

While it’s laudable that Jenkinson is always moving, never resting, Elektrac feels a bit of a sideshow: a flexing of technique with little to display but its own shiny spectacle.

A solid, listenable, blue-collar rap album.

So Split the Difference is an opportunity missed, with Gomez settling into a safe, well-worn ocean colour scene at a time when an adventurous indie/jamband hybrid might've clicked with Lollapaloozers.

Magnolia Electric Co. is no Crazy Horse, and Molina's vocabulary on the guitar doesn't yet have the presence to carry such extended interpretations of his material.

At 26 tracks, Pink Tape is bloated and messy, with occasional flashes of excellence between grating screamo misfires and unremarkable songs that feel like retreads of Playboi Carti or Trippie Redd hits.

Drillmatic is plagued by the tracklist bloat typical of the streaming era. Neither fun nor profound, the album is almost impressive in the sense of collecting so much talent to create something so mediocre.

A collection of lesser beats and hooks that somewhat returns to Original Pirate Material's sonics, Computers and Blues sadly trades that record's wonderful sense of place for a foggy vagueness that leaves Skinner's insights mostly impenetrable.

It feels like a pleasant yet unremarkable switch back to the past, the sound of Air staring into a half-empty well of ideas, on the verge of becoming their own tribute band.

Welch sounds content and resigned, recollecting the stormy Saturdays of the past with a Sunday-morning penitent’s shrug and a born-again sigh. How small, how beige, how disappointing.

They keep the music raw enough that it sounds almost-but-not-quite amateurish--again, following in the hardcore/early-thrash tradition--while Marrow’s willingness to indulge in comic absurdity with the lyrics makes Body Count’s preachiness more palatable.

As a whole, the harder Wolfpack Party tries to be a fun party record, the more forced it feels. And as solid as L's beats are, they can't stand up on their own.

The result is a record that, on the surface, sounds beautiful from start to finish. At times, though, these arrangements create a smoke-and-mirrors effect that obscures the weak spots in LeBlanc’s songwriting.

These are summer-blockbuster songs, overdriven and overproduced simply because they can be, with little-to-no actual substance behind the heavy-effects bluescreen.

Love Is Here isn't bad, and its prospect for radio play is far more appealing than, say, Train. The four just don't have the depth of their admitted influences.

There's that unmistakable "side project" air surrounding this record, the sense that this is just an enjoyable way to wile away time during hiatuses in other endeavors.

The album updates the trio's sound without the forced experimental quality of some of the weaker material on Yes or the unsuccessful lounge-pop sleeper, Like Swimming.

Forever a slave to rock history, Gallagher feels like he's biding his time for the third act reunion rather than breaking from the well-trod path.

ll We Are makes a stylish first impression, showing up so impeccably tailored that you wonder if it secretly fears all of that fumbling human contact that could mess things up.... Meanwhile, the back half of All We Are is filled with slow jams that barely stir from a post-coital heap.

Beating Back the Claws of the Cold only offers fleeting glimpses of potential greatness beneath the ho-hum surface.

Before Wild Things, Brown scrapped an entire album that, from press indications, probably sounded a lot like Anxiety; neither she nor the people she said heard it was happy with the results, but one wonders if it was really that bad, or just not commercial and crowd-pleasing enough. Wild Things collapses over the strain to be both.

Replace crackling vinyl and subwoofer bass with somber piano and mournful cello, and all you're left with is... well, a pretty goddamn miserable woman who happens to have a great voice.

It is a wearying listen, overcrowded and too loud and too harsh, and to engage actively with it is to feel your knuckles whiten with effort.

Between Two Shores was cobbled together out of songs left over from past sessions and home demos. This helps explain the album’s lack of focus. What’s missing is a singular idea for a listener to rest her headphones on. Instead, we get a hodgepodge of sentimental tunes that aren’t quite parallel, perpendicular, or adjacent to each other.

Too often, Be the Void finds Dr. Dog unleashed, letting their wilder ideas get the better of them.

Walking with the Beggar Boys sounds askew, a puzzle whose pieces don't fit properly. This sort of disjointedness can sometimes make for intriguing work, but here it just feels obligatory and slightly stunted.

For all its faults, The New Abnormal might capture how the Strokes are feeling: not ready to fade out, not primed for a comeback. Right now, they’re just way too tired.

Where Deacon infuses his day-glo riots with brainy intent, EAR PWR recycle the worst tendencies of electroclash: the lackluster rapping and willful inanity. It's frustrating because there's ample evidence that EAR PWR aren't compensating for being shitty at music, they're just dumbing down.