It's accomplished and impressive always, but sometimes to the point of verging on an overstuffed din.

The problem is that Melidis’ ear for busy atmospherics and his desire to say something deep don’t quite mesh; this music is like that huge spinning wheel on "The Price Is Right"--efficient, colorful, deadening.

With an album replete with Spanish guitar jams, wide-eyed hip-hop, and psychedelic rock k-holes, there isn't much ground left for Raury to cover. Now, he must figure out how to do it all just a little bit better.

Oh Wonder’s musical project works when the simplicity of the writing matches the simplicity of the sound. When the former element tilts out of sync—gaudy, cliché lyrics about holding cards to chests and feeling “blindsided by love”—the record caves in on itself.

What Abstract does bring to the table, though, is an ear for sticky, misshapen melodies and a rap producer’s sense of pacing, which keeps Blanket moving so briskly that its periodic clumsiness doesn’t bog it down much.

Some songs maintain the attraction of anticipation, hinting at where they might go without ever fully abandoning other options. But others feel more flat than ripe, not so much flirting with tense silence as drifting into empty inertia.

Here, it feels like a glimpse of foregone possibility on a lower-stakes project, the sound of two pros blowing off steam by proving they can recreate Top 40 spectacle.

As on that album ["Loveless"], the songs feel like they're whirling so far into the stratosphere that they might fly apart any second.

Where R.Y.C. succeeds—and where Crossan reveals a real point of view—is in his ultimate rejection of these initial frameworks in favor of something more fluid, a hybrid space in which these sounds, stylings, and emotional responses work together.

Yeah Right has its charms, but they're echoes of a band Bleeding Rainbow used to be under a slightly different name.

Despite its slightly more diverse palette, Sleep Forever merely dabbles in more styles rather than explores them, and as soon as their creative finger slips off the pleasure button, it's hard to resist from dozing.

Spiritual, Mental, Physical-- a follow-up collection of grotty practice tapes and studio goofs culled from a set of tape reels recently unearthed in a Detroit basement-- is a bit less awe-inspiring.

Rush!, their first album recorded mainly in English, is absolutely terrible at every conceivable level: vocally grating, lyrically unimaginative, and musically one-dimensional. It is a rock album that sounds worse the louder you play it.

Overall, there's a strong sense of exploration on Sawdust; if the Killers don't seem to have much intuitive understanding of balance and songcraft, the overproduction at least suggests a strong musical curiosity underlying their obvious career ambitions.

Sonics aside, what truly distinguishes this recent iteration of Sorority Noise is Boucher's newfound sense of responsibility.

If Samson's voice had the full-blooded verve of her old bandmate Hanna, she might be able to sell this stuff. Instead, she delivers all the album's lyrics in the same flat monotone, and she just sounds bored the whole time.

While so many bands at their status revert to bloated contentment or some vague idea of rockist salvation, Mylo Xyloto finds Coldplay successfully continuing to explore the tension of wanting to be one of the best bands in the world and having to settle for being one of the biggest.

The guests regularly outshine the hosts, but each has a variation on the sort of rugged, gruff flow that doesn't leave Erick or Parrish gasping.

Kicks is not the follow-up that "Cookies" deserved, but its handful of winning standout tracks also suggests that its predecessor wasn't simply a fluke.

Things just ain't the same for quasi-mad scientist/ghetto philosopher/sexual dynamo superheroes.

Beyond Yudin’s massive artistic debt, Cayucas’ main flaw is failing to recognize the difference between leaving something to the imagination and making the listener do all the hard work.

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

Gallery is six Craft Spells songs that range from good to pretty good, which theoretically should make it a welcome addition.

In its punchy production and eagerness to mix hard rock with boppy little guitar leads and cheeky catchy choruses, Kiss & Tell is a direct throwback to that fertile crossroads between thickheaded 70s AOR and the pop/new-wave nexus of the early 1980s.

Dyer and Sanchez are the sort of artists who will continue to challenge themselves at every turn. As long as they can keep that boundless creativity from going in a million different directions at once, their listeners will reap plenty of rewards.

It’s too bad that many of the other collaborations here feel as generic and laborious as a ProTools tutorial.

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.

CAOS, title notwithstanding, is elegant and poised.

A challenging debut that sidesteps inflated expectations by staying close to the group's established sound while still demonstrating a flexibility conducive to future musical development.

Taken as a whole, S+@dium Rock ultimately feels less like a document of an historic homecoming event and more like the sort of bonus material that comprises the extra disc of a deluxe reissue.

For now, Heterotic stands as a yet another promising venture from one of the most consistently surprising minds in electronic music.

It's a shame that premature commercial success has sullied Editors' creativity, because <i>An End</i> contains its share of bright spots.

Further into the record, the band invests in smaller details, and when it does the songs overcome the lyrical shortcomings.

In addition to being a strong return to form, Two-Way Mirror gives Crystal Antlers some much needed momentum after an unfortunate run of bad timing and bad luck.

In Pagans in Vegas, humans and machines exist in a binary relationship. The reality is both more nuanced and fertile than that.

That they don't treat ambient as empty-headed fluff for relaxation is laudable, but it also doesn't make Ursprung any less of a record for a self-selecting coterie of sound-art aficionados.

Free Dimensional feels like a sequel [to debut album, Special Affections], more professional, calculated, and occasionally satisfying, ultimately lacking the anything-goes magic that called for a sequel in the first place.

Shine isn’t dark. But it feels like an exercise in avoidance as if Wale took the advice to ease up too far.

Kiyoko’s debut won’t blow past anyone’s expectations, but it contains just enough intrigue and individuality to sustain them for a second shot.

As strong and unusual as The Law of the Playground is, especially out of step in 2009, it never quite feels as inspired, as fraught with conflicted beauty, as past songs 'Paper Cuts' or 'Be Gentle With Me' or 'Monsters.'

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.

For all the racket, there simply isn’t enough focus, enough control, or enough music. Improvisations hints at the duo’s potential but is a fundamentally insubstantial listen.

In Ciara's effort to prove herself a diva, her second album flails, bloated with spoken-word interludes and boilerplate pop & b that obscures some truly good songs.

This Is Gap Dream ends up being too truthful, as there’s rarely any indication Fulvimar intended for this to reach an audience far beyond himself.

[Buyers oif the CD will] hear several solid-to-excellent songs that extend the rootsy trajectory of the Magic Numbers' fine first outing, making up in winsome intensity what they lack as far as edginess or sex appeal.

He set out to make a mediocre album, and succeeded admirably.

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

The real problem with Volcano, though, is not only the fact that they aren't really doing anything inventive with their music, but that the music itself is utterly forgettable.

Not really a must-have collection for anyone that doesn't have a Ben Gibbard shrine in the corner of their dorm room.

Replaces the cheap sounds of their earlier records with more traditional sonics, which leave the often-clever lyrics feeling like an afterthought.

Unlike Dedication 2 or Da Drought 3, Sorry 4 the Wait sounds like the work of a mortal human being. Happily, that mortal human being still happens to be very good at rapping.

With Outrage! Is Now, Death From Above join the rare breed of artists who are able to capitalize on their maturity without betraying the spirit of their youth.

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

In short: We all really wish this was better-- less tiring, less dour, less sluggish-- than it actually is.

Whether she's giving the rhythm section a cigarette break, trying to approximate the sound of an anesthetized New Pornographers, or adding the same sort of pseudo-dancey Casio flourishes that have colored her work since the first Azure Ray album, Taylor never fails to instill the same sense of inescapable inertia throughout.

While Cave represents a return to form, the band hasn't recaptured the beauty of early highlights like 'When the Red King Comes' or 'A Dream in Sound.'

This year, we've seen Taking Back Sunday, Saves The Day, and the Get Up Kids attempting to play catch up with themselves, but here Braid bafflingly jettison the goodwill of their past: the palm-muted verses and squeaky choruses, the one-sided conversations of the lyrics, the antiseptic production -- I'll say it could come from anyone because you probably don't remember who the Pinehurst Kids are.

Too often, he strays from the hushed mode he's mastered and ends up supplanting the band’s strengths with its weaknesses.

Outside of its immediate context, Lights is a sometimes great, always promising debut. It's an album about leaving home, and it works best when the contrast between the folk singer and the pop production chimes with the tensions between the pull of home and the allure of the city.

Prisoner is marred by weak analogies (“colder than Minnesota,” “buzz like Georgia Tech) and Kweli’s bumpy writerliness (“ornithology” and “onomatopoeia” are just two less-than-melodious words used here), leading this to be his most underwhelming record yet word-for-word.

It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s easy to understand the need to release it. At best, Losst and Founnd is a way to feel closer to Nilsson, no matter how long it’s been since he left us.

-, pronounced “subtract,” which responds to them much like its predecessor, 2021’s =, did to its themes of turning 30 and becoming a parent: with the usual beige palette, generic hooks, and vapid lyrics. The songs on - are almost uniformly dour, often slow, occasionally drumless.

A lot of Make Another World doesn't stick the way good guitar pop should.

Virtually every track on You Are the One I Pick showcases Felix's remarkable instinct for knowing when to ramp up their instrumentation and when to hold back. Yet when an album is this carefully arranged, there are also moments when all the fingerprints on a given track become distracting.

The best parts of Banks are the ones that most resemble Interpol, rather than the stabs at spooky, old-guy mope-pop that comprise most of the record. In that respect, this album fails as a valid statement outside of the confines of Banks' band.

MellowHigh is not disorienting but rather frighteningly familiar.

Methyl Ethel’s debut full-length, Oh Inhuman Spectacle, is reflective of the project’s humble, hermetic beginnings, with Webb handling all the production and instrumentation.

That the songs are essentially interchangeable 8-cylinder rawk is one thing; that they begin to clearly resemble the long-forgotten, acid-coated Eastern-revivalists Kula Shaker is something more distressing altogether.

Luna is enjoyable enough to listen to, and a lot of Beta Band followers will find plenty to enjoy here, but it's ultimately an album I didn't like as much as I wanted to, and one that doesn't really find its footing until it's almost over.

SOL has less gravity when it steers away from its majestic solar themes and tries to put its abstract sensations into words. Eskmo's vocals, while delicate, still feel intrusive.

Where Living With Yourself found McGuire sticking to moody, simple melodies, Get Lost inches up the volume a little.

Replica Sun Machine is an exceedingly simple thing--with tunes so familiar-feeling to be easily ignorable--but it's presented with a false sense of intricacy, gussied up and disguised as something more than it really is.

It's an interesting middle ground the band reach here, touching upon many previous bases while not favoring entirely the guitar tomfoolery or the smirking electro-rock.

It's difficult to overcome consistently lame, often meaningless lyrics-- especially with Suede's classic rock focus on singer and melody-- but they cope.

Significant artistic development of any kind probably would've been a bad idea for this band-- they were, as the saying goes, small but perfectly formed. Still, it's also not quite satisfying to hear 40-year-olds come back to what they were doing half their lifetime ago and approach it exactly the same way.

This EP sounds like more than the sum of its parts. Maybe it's the realization that Gnarls Barkley will never top "Crazy" or that the Shins may never re-form, but there's an intriguing sense of desperation on these songs, as though both Mercer and Burton are realizing that this band could indeed be their lives.

The songs here are absent of feeling or inspiration, but even creepier, they feel absent of intent.

Daughter of Cloud accurately depicts an artist who has pushed his artistic license to its very limit. It also makes a convincing argument for the virtue of accepting some of those pushed-aside limitations.

Each track offers something worthwhile, yet none raises any question as to why it ended up here.

So Wildlife isn't exactly bursting at the seams with earworms, but it's a worthy achievement for taking a poignant, powerful emotional state and carrying its thread for 42 minutes.

ADULT. still do a convincing showroom-dummies impersonation, but they’ve never sounded more human than they do here.

There is of course a huge market for their kind of angst-ridden emo, and in many ways--particularly lyrically--this album sounds like it's been lifted straight from the emo handbook, which may well satisfy many listeners. For the less committed, however, the lack of the band's usual wit and musical inventiveness will be missed.

The Cave Singers' mild, moseying tunes aren't without their minor charms, and they're unfailingly good at conjuring images of wide-open fields and dust-caked lanes, but nobody wants to walk down the same road all the time if they can help it.

Generally speaking, the choruses on Rise far outshine the meandering verses, as the band snaps into a more simple and straightforward groove that highlights the trademark Kirkwood drawl.

I Am Gemini is Cursive's weakest record by a disheartening margin.

Mendes spends nearly every minute bowled over by the power of love. It’s nice to see his cup overflow so bountifully, but the near-constant awe quickly grows tiresome, especially when conveyed through clichés like, “Your body’s like an ocean, I’m devoted to explore you” and, “You’re my sunlight on a rainy day.”

The rest of the album is stuff he's done before and better.

From a production standpoint, the record sounds great, but at its core, it comes up empty, lacking a solid foundation of good songs to rest its adventurous studio trickery upon.... It's the most frustrating type of album there is-- one that's full of promise and shining moments, but never fully delivers.

Green Imagination does awkwardly stumble into some redeeming moments, but never without a slog through the banal first.

What an utter mess.

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

El Rey has its share of surprises, mostly in the vein of its particular subject, which is the cruelty older men visit on younger women, and vice versa. But mostly it's merely another Wedding Present record: witty, randy, guitar-heavy, and not quite satisfied.

Likability has got Kylie Minogue this far, and it pulls her through again--even the weak tracks on X have a sparky enthusiasm that makes their magpie modernism sound less cynical.

This uniformity of tone and tempo understandably causes You & Me to wilt through its middle stretches despite its relatively brief running time.

Time is a delightfully shambling debut that succeeds in spite of obvious trappings.

Feathers seems less a continuation of Logic than a valuable complement, cheerful and heartfelt as the latter was somber and stylized.

It's overproduced as hell, filled with all manner of electro doodads and backmasking effects, but it also boasts an immediacy and pop smarts heretofore unheard from the band. Unfortunately, that directness applies to the lyrics as well, and they simply cannot be ignored.

Unfortunately, too many of the songs highlight Starfucker's shortcomings, leaving them introspective, detached, and even timid. If this three-piece can learn to have as much fun in the studio as they do onstage, these fuckers might actually become stars.