Blueprint 3 is the kind of stuck-on-stupid, event-driven money pit that proves while Jay-Z's at a point where he's got no one to answer to but himself, he's still capable of an entire hour of failing to take his own advice.

Those who are coming into Transfixiation blind might just hear a notable band boasting a currently rare commitment to an '80s kind of noise-rock rather than the '90s iterations of shoegaze, goth, or industrial that’s more prominent in 2015. Then again, APTBS’ progress as a band only serves to expose the underlying one-dimensionality of their actual songwriting.

What makes Live so disappointing isn't that it offers too few shots of the band they were, but so many glimpses of the band they could be, if they were more adventurous in hi-fi.

Gauntlet Hair lasts only nine songs. But they're all potential singles in their own right, all different.

Excusing the album's inherent garishness, 666 expands Hella's core sound to new heights that, although at times hard to stomach, finds the band both at their most playful and regimented.

And though their passable guitar parts-- all choppy downstrokes and wiry, insistent clangs-- lose their exuberance as the record stretches on, for at least the album’s first six tracks, they are played with such adolescent gusto that it's hard not to be won over.

I'm sure it's all firecrackers live, and in their defense, Dinowalrus' populist-noise contemporaries (Liars, Oneida) needed periods of woodshedding to find their way. But I suppose it does the title justice when % finds a band that's not quite all there yet.

While Presidence may keep its distance, it's never hard to enter, and individual pieces are as intriguing by themselves as they are in the album's wide-open context.

Through the Green can scan as simple or nostalgic, but either misses the point (and neither is the album a "modern take" on disco). It's an album of execution, of Tiger & Woods sharing sounds that aren't elusive and chasing feelings that are.

The band's personal choices--to abandon rock iconography for smaller, more fulfilling family units--will be Grace's fate as well: a record without broader narratives, meant for those who grew up with the Rapture, or want to.

The discrepancy on Bootlegs between studious songcraft and rambunctious execution occasionally sounds distractingly self-conscious, but Lerche still sounds better here for sounding so unguarded and loose.

More often than not, however, Mice Parade pushes these songs down paths that don't fit.

Kiss Land sounds every bit as isolated and singular as Tesfaye feels.

Given what he’s proven capable of as part of his main gig, though, it’s hard not to wish that, when left to his own devices, he made more of an effort to get outside of his own head.

Unveiled and ineffectual, Matthewson’s gripes get boring quickly. The sense that you’ve heard these songs before--or at least their frameworks and tricks--doesn’t help.

Underworld’s compositions are lush and polished, while Iggy’s ad-libs tend to spin their wheels, at times pausing and sputtering while he searches for the next word or phrase.

There’s a great lightness to each of Olsen’s covers, an attempt to abandon the feet she has planted on the ground. But the songs are rendered so fluffily that it’s hard to hear any of their structural elements; instead, the collection sounds more like a series of beautiful ooh-ing.

Timbaland's productions are the weaker links on this frustratingly ordinary album.

A dense and star-studded collection that sounds like the millennium’s most expensive karaoke party.

Konk feels like a mere cowardly act, a TPS report from a band that strives to be nothing more than British pop's ultimate company men.

That inferiority complex and desperate need for approval keeps L.A.X. surprisingly entertaining even though there are far more weak tracks on it than good ones.

Between the carefully plotted reference points and the not-exactly-gripping lyrics, Forever tends to run together over the course of its 39-minute runtime. Still, taken song-for-song, there's no shortage of takeaways.

You'll find something to latch onto in every song, but you won't always walk away from Negotiations with its choruses in your head; it's a more consistent record than its predecessor, but more orderly, too, and the highs just aren't quite as high.

Though much of Spills Out seems to zip by in a blur, it's assembled with enough care to never quite spin out from its center.

As “Dancing Is the Best Revenge” illustrates, !!! are at their best when making dance music that’s both unabashedly celebratory and stridently unsentimental. When the band veer into more typically romantic house terrain (“Our Love (U Can Get)”) and starry-eyed electro-rock (“Throw Yourself in the River”), their peculiar, provocateur personality is muted.

Anika is shortsighted in the best way: it's a tribute, an exercise, the charming kind.

Meds isn't a terrible album, but there's very little to get excited about on it either, and Placebo's calculated naughtiness is no more convincing than it's ever been.

Thing is, it still sounds entirely like an Air album--just a remarkably bland one.

RELAXER shows us what remains after those quirks are dialed back: some perfectly nice, perfectly blank lads who have no idea why they are standing in front of you and even less of an idea what to say.

She [Alexis Krauss] directs this show, and the space she occupies helps the lyrics stick.

Though the band still sticks faithfully to their trademark sci-fi surf gimmick, they've omitted the annoying science film samples, and actually show, for the first time in years, traces of creativity.

A lackluster, continuously-mixed double-disc look back at Maas' remixing talents. Or rather, a look back at his ability to appropriate hooks from often far superior sources.

As an album, Lost Sirens isn't at all an embarrassment: it's a document of a band whose range and reach, rather than power, are what has been diminished.

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

At 11 tracks, it's longer than 2 and lacks the experimentation of Drink More Water 5, and it drags.

Maverick has a more consistent tone than either of Beans' previous records, but it also lacks the stand-outs of its predecessors, settling into bland production strokes that recede behind his always fascinating rhymes.

What Garnier can lack in feeling, he makes up for with years of technical know-how, on The Cloud Making Machine as before.

End of the World still isn't quite as fun as it could be, as the Larson sisters slip back into old habits on a string of tracks that are too reminiscent of last year's Trust Now.

Weaver’s benefitted greatly from the rising tide of artists who are challenging pop’s sonic and structural rules, but on The Fool she sounds like she’s lost at sea.

Listeners are left wondering if they’ve just gorged on an Anglo response to J-pop, a post (white-)boy-band attempt to alley-oop new jack swing, or the work of a Scissor Sister gone solo.

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

Domesticated is a concept album whose concept falls flat; a shot at the future that’s too in debt to the past; a brilliant idea consumed by inertia—less back-breaking deep clean than half-hearted tidy.

At nearly every turn of their flaccid debut, Up All Night, Razorlight squander the ideas they've snatched up from other, more talented acts, then somehow find even more ways to ruin already perfectly uninteresting songs.

There is vintage new wave rawness and goth-inflected bounce all over this thing, and it manages to leave this band in fresh-sounding territory that's somehow miles away from most everything today's "new wave revivalists" and/or "electro-punks" have even thought about trying.

Most of these songs suffer from a lack of motion or a mere inability to edit the excess away from that motion.

Pollard and company seem especially unfiltered when it comes to ideas, yet unusually patient in bringing them to life.

While she may never have been the most articulate and thoughtful messenger, in AIM, M.I.A. demonstrates her legacy as an artist eager to tackle issues that are volatile and antagonistic. But at this point her music is more potent in theory than execution.

While the musicianship on display is impressive, Cook's songwriting could certainly be sharper. None of these songs have strong enough hooks to encourage repeat listening or stand out from the rest of the EP.

Marketing aside, Phase doesn't sound unpleasant, just generic.

These tracks are botched experiments that can't even function as interesting failures.

Whenever Rice risks truly touching us emotionally-- say, when he's asking a former lover, "Do you brush your teeth before you kiss?" on "Accidental Babies"-- he undercuts himself with go-nowhere melodies and formulaic arrangements.

Because the Internet is a nobly expansive attempt at plumbing the catacombs of social media for meaning and exploring the gap between the performative avatars we present as our online selves and the offline realities of our lives, but like the Twitter hounds and comment section warriors it speaks to and about, it could ultimately do well with a little less multitasking.

Their search for large-scale anthems and keenness to replicate a formula that doesn’t come naturally to them leaves them sounding boxed in, and imbuing Heart of Nowhere with all the grace and flexibility of four concrete pillars.

For all the great ideas and fantastic moments sprinkled throughout Peeping Tom, it turns out that Mike Patton's idea of pop is as uncompromising as his other musical notions. In this case, what's great in theory doesn't work so well in practice.

With keen observations and piles of swagger tucked away somewhere for the time being, the Rakes could still be the soundtrack to plenty of lives-- or at the very least, daily commutes-- if only they could find the strength to muster a smirk.

Each new direction leads into a wall or dies for lack of momentum.

Though Cydonia is far from being a dull, sequencer-heavy Namlook ambient release, it regrettably sounds irrelevant in today's climate.

Loewenstein's problems seem to spring from a penchant for textbook hard rock and an almost astonishing lack of range, failings that are amplified by his choice to record all of At Sixes and Sevens' instrumentation himself.

Too many of the songs are flimsy and fragmentary, never shaping into anything substantial and coming across like incidental music.

The ephemerality of Original Machines assures that Keely never gets bogged down in any bad ideas, but often times, those are his most interesting ideas.

Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight escapes as Travis Scott’s best work yet: a combination of elevated significance, self-awareness, and the old trick of spinning something so plain into something so luxurious.

On the stupid loud songs, Craig Nicholls sounds like a bored Kurt Cobain. On the stupid slow songs, Craig Nicholls sounds like a bored Liam Gallagher.

Even if Chinese Democracy had dropped a decade previous, it would still sound dated.

None of it’s bad, sometimes it’s good, but why now? .... They take the easy way out by evoking past memories rather than building new ones. Understandable because remembering the old days is pretty sweet, well, until it hits you that they’re gone.

Mostly a failure, but with enough glimmers of a true comeback to tease fans into checking out the next one.

As a distilled 5-song EP, Stockholm might have served as a refreshing slap in the face--a potent reminder of what a vibrant jolt of lightning Chrissie Hynde can be--but instead, it's a rather wan listen.

For a record that sounds like memories of better times, there's a disheartening shortage of hooks or melodies that aren't hitched to lyrics you'd rather forget.

Its introspection and chest-thumping are just enough to keep the stakes reasonably high.

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.

As with The Things We Think, it feels like the sound of a curious band still working out how to make music as distinct as its influences; whether lyrically or sonically, they come across as either unknowable or proudly workmanlike.

Bono may have self-deprecatingly described Songs of Innocence as “the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys...in your junk mail,” but it’s not even that interesting--it’s just a blank message.

A loose, warm, and human-scale record that sounds pretty nice right out of the gate.

Obviously, a host of issues--from downtime to headlines--compelled Walla to make this record, and his effort shows. What's missing is a compelling reason to listen.

The Dr Dee soundtrack is a deeply felt but difficult to love entry into Albarn's entirely singular discography.

Getting Closer is fashionable and curious, but there's an extreme lucidity to it that is off-putting, forgetting for a moment a handful of dud tracks.

Oddly, for an album that cheekily presents itself as a long-lost ’70s prog cut-out bin artifact, Musik, die Schwer zu Twerk’s most notable characteristic may be its 29-minute brevity, offering a tasting-menu sampler of the various modes the Lips have been exploring for the past five years.

Besides a handful of catchy verses, though, there aren’t enough standout moments on B.I.B.L.E.

There is a resigned quality to Hungry Bird that stands in sharp contrast with the sprightly, slightly goofy tack the band took on 2001's career highlight The Ghost of Fashion.

By bombarding the listener with innocuousness, Alpha forge a test to determine exactly when the pedestrian becomes excruciating. By the third track, they more or less have their answer.

Perhaps the Blues Explosion is aware of the garage revival, and looking to claim some kind of Neil Young-esque patriarchal crown. If so, the dozen tracks of Plastic Fang fail miserably, giving off the appearance of a 35 year-old accountant hanging around the old frat house on Homecoming weekend.

The album straddles a line between being thin and casual, at times pulling back the curtain on the finished product to show Nabay chatting, humming, and tapping out the building blocks of the songs to his bandmates.

There’s no question that van den Broek is an energetic and capable musician, but those qualities feel irrelevant when they show up in songs that might appear on a bad Shuggie Otis covers album. Anyone can make music that sounds like soul, but not all music has one.

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.

Icy and stiff has been the band's M.O., but its new material demands performances that command that sparseness rather than toy with it. Had the band drawn on some of that confidence from R&B as well as the instrumentation, it could have made this record even more compelling.

The productions shine, mixing taut electro rhythms with those swirling strings. There's a sense of scale to the album that is really attractive.

Fifth Harmony isn’t offensively bad, in fact, it sits quite comfortably with many other acts dominating the charts at the moment. But it’s too safe, too by-the-numbers, too beige to stand up to even Fifth Harmony’s previous work, which carried more lyrical and musical heft.

When Kill Them With Kindness works it's because of Fein and Wraight's keen attention to melody and the way their voices complement one another and inject these songs with warmth and emotion.

Fellow Travelers can be seen as Shearwater showing their scratch work, and while great cover albums can be a revelation or an embarrassment, most end up right around here: which is to say, admirable and flawed.

Unfortunately, though, while they sound brighter and more alive than they have in a while, their default mode still leans a little too heavily on Hyde's increasingly silly beat poetry and the kind of unashamedly booming drums that haven't sounded exciting since, well, 1997.

Most of Tree City sounds lifted from Britt Daniel's songbook. By that, I don't mean it sounds somewhat like it. I mean, it sounds like they stole the tapes from Britt's house and scribbled their name over his.

Mercer's able to fill cavern-like spaces with the might of his many soliloquies. Easy listening or not at all, it's why Skin of Evil--here and gone in just 30 minutes--remains so gripping: Some turns are capable of provoking a physical reaction.

True to its titular subject, Diver constitutes a daring leap for Lemonade, one that, at times, appears destined to result in a belly-flop, but recovers nicely in the end.

The darkness is where Lortz repeatedly returns, and when he does, the album swoons into a near-stasis.

With that frustrating distance between Tiny Rebels' finely tuned sonics and Kelly's uncharacteristically indistinct lyrics, it's hard not to wonder what another week might've done.

More than Lightbody’s lack of cogency, the imperious tone burdens Wildness.

These are talented musicians-- and Vol. 2 is superior to the first disc-- but that development hardly merits owning two full albums of indifferent collaboration.

The new record basks in Endless Flowers' sunny afterglow, but the songs here are brasher, nervier, and a lot more fun.

Byrne and Slim never misstep here, but they also never surprise. At best you may wind up distantly admiring their craftsmanship.