Everything rolls along like it’s actually going somewhere—not a flatulent dubstep waddle, but an aerodynamic gallop that brings to mind a deeper lineage of loud and obnoxious dance music, from the technical end of drum’n’bass to “proper” dubstep, Northern bassline, and Chicago juke.

For what it's worth, Waterloo goes round-for-round with Doherty's solo vehicle, but too much of its pop luster succumbs to could've/should've-been pathos, both lyrically and musically.

The band's superhuman patience and dirty minimalism seem fit for longer, more sprawling works. Instead, they're stuck in limbo between catchiness and craftsmanship.

GusGus's seventh album isn't quite a hangover, and there's still a party going on--but the party is somewhere far away.

For better and for worse, there is nothing cringe-inducing on It's Decided; the record mostly sounds like I should remember to tip my barista.

In other words, it’s strong and considered enough to mean big things to more people than just Pierce. Even the best Drums albums surround a few highlights with filler, though, and Brutalism falls even harder into this pattern.

Though Wallen’s idea was to split the album according to theme, things aren’t quite as delineated as that. Even at his most boisterous, Wallen is given to introspection, and he can make the straightest love song gnarly.

Father of 4 ultimately works as a solo outing because Offset is such a force of nature, but it’s too often cautious where it could be candid, or dull where it should be sharp. Still, the record is a progression for Offset and for Migos.

Pretty, lovely, fine, fair, comely, pleasant, agreeable, acceptable, adequate, satisfactory, nice, benign, harmless, innocuous, innocent, largely unobjectionable, safe, forgettable.

Though enjoyable, it may land in a limbo, too simplistic for fans of great chamber music or its challenging modern variants; too classical--lacking bells, whistles, samples and beats--to make it more than pleasant dinner party music for people coming from the indie side.

The resulting album, the most resolutely electronic work he's done yet, buzzes like an ice-cream headache.

This is where Tell Me You Love Me improves on Lovato’s previous albums: It gives you enough space to see Demi as something other than a no-holds-barred belter.

Death by Sexy rubs out the line between novelty and earnestness, reminding us that music doesn't have to be ironic to have a sense of humor.

This Is Alphabeat feels labored, sacrificing identity in its endless eagerness to please.

Quinn and Donaldson may be getting somewhat longer in the tooth, but they’re sounding younger. And whatever darkness lurks within Family Crimes is swallowed back down with a wise, dreamy smile.

The only things you hear on the album are Wainwright's voice and his piano, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The problem is that he wants you to luxuriate in both when it's far more likely you'll feel like you're drowning, given how rarely Wainwright buoys the listener with an actual melody or memorable lyric.

Heart's production work, again by Bilerman, isn't always successful....But the album shakes such shackles often enough to maintain an atmosphere of warm intimacy.

Fate still manages to be a master class in illusory "good" songwriting. The bulk of it is so fenced into classicist templates-- chamber-y pop meets maximum R&B with the occasional smidge of "tasteful" gospel/parlour games ("Hang On") that, even when merely competent, it can still win over those unimpressed with all that punk and hip-hop riff raff of the past three decades.

Sorry, this is decent pub-rock, but there are 1,000 albums released every day. Buy another one.

There are certain things they do very well, yet they don't seem to be content with being pigeonholed as one-dimensional. Unfortunately, one-dimensional is about the only thing they can pull off convincingly.

Songs this bitter demand catharsis, but nestled in its pop cocoon, that side of Hatfield's story instead gets stifled by the soft bomb approach when what you really want is for the singer, once and for all, to explode in rage and break something.

In My Feelings often feels as if its about to collapse under its own weight, which is doubly frustrating when you consider it clocks in at a slight 34 minutes.

Carpenter is working in service to his own nostalgia, and he understands intuitively what his score is here to do. It is not meant to be frightening. It is meant to make you feel warm and fuzzy things about John Carpenter, about the first time you saw the original Halloween.

Most rappers would sell their soul for his ability to shape his melody to latch onto any relevant sound, but everything here feels so safe.

The Evens positively brims with revelations, not least of which is the consistent effectiveness of MacKaye's singing voice.

His fantasies and lack of filter are still huge roadblocks for many if not most listeners. They're depraved and despicable, tied in part to a long and unfortunate legacy of gangster and street rap. They're also one aspect of a larger, character-driven story -- a license that we grant to visual arts, film, and literature but rarely to pop music.

[Listening to the album is like] a reunion with an old friend, but not necessarily a close one. For half an hour, you think "why don't we do this more often?" until it ends and you remember how frustrating they can be.

A whole album of these sort of showy gestures would likely prove exhausting, but the Strips are careful not to overdo it, and Girls and Weather is stacked with singles that condense the band's energy and enthusiasm into more compact bursts of joy.

An album about unfit enemies and deserved death that nevertheless delights in its own music-making élan.

It's a charming album from an artist with an obsessive/compulsive love for writing shambolic, vaguely psych-infused rock songs but it doesn’t, distinguish itself from any number of similar records from this sphere over the past few years.

Richter’s approach is almost too cut-and-dry; there’s none of the messiness that comes with processing emotion or the tension and release that defines catharsis. But closer “Movement, Before all Flowers” offers a welcome surprise.

Knowing that Kahan is capable of a song like “August” just makes the more pro forma arrangements on the rest of the album more frustrating.

It has a bigger-budget feel—stronger guests, better pacing, and a more careful consideration for its audience.

The uneasy beats on Taste are part of what give that album its kick. Guitarist Geordie Gordon and drummer Adam Halferty also make both albums richer by providing dense textures and strong background vocals.

What Fantasy is missing isn’t any one synth preset, or a cultural reference for the next season of Stranger Things to popularize. It just lacks urgency.

For a record this simple and, even at its punchiest, seductively serene, it might seem far-fetched to compliment it for being daring. But considering its own orbit--and her eschewing lo-fi recording techniques--Rose cuts right to the chase, making lean, elegant music that practically glows in the face of exceptional fuss.

The end result is a rich, triumphant sonic tapestry; you can hear every dollar that went into it.

Grand Animals may jostle for more musical elbow room, but it sounds just as preening as their previous efforts.

Electricity by Candlelight shows off Chilton's instrumental virtuosity and his impressive memory for songs.

The End of Silence is Herbert effectively tussling with what "significance" means at this particular moment in time, in a record that's as much a part of the gathering noise of the 21st century as it is a comment on the constant numbing we've wreaked upon ourselves.

Man Made Object is tailor-made for laid-back enjoyment, to be consumed at a moderate volume without much fuss. It marks a nice step forward for a group that lives comfortably beyond artistic restraints.

Opus oscillates between two poles. On the one side are entrancing progressive house numbers like the bookending "Liam" and "Opus."... At the other end of the spectrum are songs informed by Prydz’s pop instincts, and these can be more of a mixed bag.

A collection that leaves so much on the table in terms of possibility. Many of these selections are too on-the-nose, kowtowing to Johnson’s legacy as though kneeling before his corpse at a wake.

Is This the Life’s myriad sonic references to his work with Pink Floyd suggest that Waters is comfortable with his past. The more you accept how much his past reflects in his present, the more receptive you’ll be to this album’s charms.

Baby Grand would be enough to make you jealous of McLamb’s contentment, if his generosity in bringing listeners along on this transformative trip didn’t elicit such gratitude.

The new album marks a retreat into a nostalgia-act comfort zone—one which suits Nas, even as it yields diminishing returns.

The Times feels genuine and unforced—an organic expression of whatever he was feeling at the time, in all its weirdness and contradiction. In other words, it’s prime Neil Young.

The sidelining of his talents on the kit is a disappointment, but it’s not a deal breaker. On the whole, Look Up succeeds for the same reasons that Beaucoups of Blues did: songs that play to Starr’s vocal strengths, a sympathetic supporting cast, and a natural, Nashville feel.

For all the possibilities suggested by their debut album, Clinic are threatening to become the sort of rock band of which you only really need to own one album, and that album remains Internal Wrangler.

Whether this breakthrough portends a change in course remains to be seen, but, at this point in their consistent-to-a-fault career, it's encouraging to hear Wooden Shjips draw the emotion out of their motion.

It’s the slowest and least cluttered instrumentals that feel here the most effectively expansive, capturing the scope of the quartet’s chosen themes without collapsing beneath symbolism and meaning-making.

As both look back and a step forward, it serves as a possible gateway album, and more intriguingly, it hints at a new chapter in the band’s chameleonic career through which all their scattered points of reference might operate in beautiful, deadly unison.

Personal Life is hardly a failure; much of it is excellent. But it's also missing that anger-meets-energy urgency that made the Thermals' early albums so undeniable.

Halstead's performing reinvents no wheels but never is anything less than well-done regardless, and the full performances can often find their own impact.

It’s all exceedingly pleasant, which is a bit of a curse. They’re songs with ingratiating hooks—tracks that would benefit from the ambient exposure of a grocery store or a doctor’s office, where they’d worm their way into the subconscious leaving no trace of entry. It’s so comfortable, in fact, that it hardly feels creative.

As a full-length listening experience, Violent Hearts is a little much-- it runs just under a lean half-hour, but the relative lack of stylistic breadth covered makes a front-to-back spin feel longer.

Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors is on the one hand a genre-busting statement of artistic restlessness but it's also a mess.

The Solution is a deeply schizophrenic record, one that completely divorces Beanie's cocksure swagger from his introspective depth.

As down-to-earth as Secret Cities can be, at points you wish they'd be more direct: "Vamos a La Playa" and "The End" play so loosely, they border on disintegration, rounding out Pink Graffiti in overly cloudy manner, both sonically and lyrically.

Presley finds melodic inspiration in classic rock, but blurs his reference points toward punk by coating the music in lo-fi grit. His third proper album, Family Perfume, doubles down on those zonked out inclinations.

Departed Glories’ strongest individual tracks are uncompromisingly abstract. ... Less profound, on their own, are the tracks that let edge-of-intelligibility vocal collages in the manner of Julianna Barwick do most of the work. But they play a flattering role in the album as a whole, which is how it should be heard

Even if his latest offering is considerably dimmer than his most golden works, it’s still a confident assertion that, even at 77 years old, his pursuit of the sun’s life-affirming light shows no signs of wavering.

From the outset, Saturday Night both plays to expectations and subverts them.

On his own, he’s not a particularly compelling songwriter. The album aspires to cult-classic obscurity and lands in the realm of the tolerably generic.

The haziness of Free has its share of frustrations—as alluring as the pensive soundscapes are, it’s hard not to wish they were occasionally more sculpted—but there’s something curiously human and appealing about its ungainly nature.

Broder is better at details than broad strokes, and Ditherer contains some excellent ones; they're just buried in the piecemeal and decidedly indelicate songwriting.

Blood Bank certainly dispels concerns that Vernon's accomplishment was somehow environmental--that "For Emma's" poetic circumstances, and not its contents, were responsible for its success.

The most surprising takeaway from Tha Carter V, it turns out, isn’t that Wayne still has music this vital in him. It’s that after all these years, there’s still more to learn about him.

Take It, It’s Yours may be one of the comfiest cover-sets in recent memory, but beneath its chilled-out façade lurks an identity crisis.

Despite the lyrical punch, Yours Conditionally is hamstrung by Tennis’ drums. The keys and bass on the album are unfailingly warm, but the shabby percussion is one-note, almost the work of a different band.

In track after track, he mulls over memories of neighborhood characters and late-night hijinks, contemplating all the ways that the city can grind you down. The lone exception is “Riding Cobbles,” a lighthearted fantasy of European idyll. Several Songs About Fire plays out like a long, messy divorce from an adopted home. Musically, though, there’s nothing shaggy about Several Songs About Fire.

What’s most exciting about GLORIOUS is its idiosyncrasy. Expanding beyond playlistable trap prerequisites and the wistful soul chops that signal A Serious Rap Album, GloRilla channels the music of her youth, cycling through crunk and gospel with aplomb.

By ABBA’s own imperial standards, this is more ABBA Silver than ABBA Gold. ... Still, a second-string ABBA record is far better than most pop groups can muster, and Voyage is the rare post-reformation album to build upon the band’s legacy without abandoning what we loved about their classic records in the first place.

For the most part, the music gives the illusion of being something sourceless, something created without effort--not product, but pure being; not labor, but freedom.

Urban Turban feels especially emblematic of a band that's fully liberated itself from any commercial or audience expectations and shifted its experimental ethos into overdrive.

Everything Everything's debut LP, Man Alive, is proof that enthusiastic experimentation can't save your end product when the underlying elements are so incompatible and unappetizing.

Following the "haunted murk" of Amaranthine, Youngs takes a drastic turn on Summer Through My Mind, an album of slightly unhinged but almost relentlessly tuneful Americana songs.

Irreal is a deliberately exhausting listen. The band dares you to see how far you can stomp behind them without a melodic phrase or a lyrical narrative to grab hold of.

Mullen’s personality goes a long way in setting him apart from the pack. The same goes for Suffocation as a whole, whose staying power on ...Of the Dark Night is undeniable.

What Chimpanzee could use is simply more music. The EP works well as a compact statement, and even in its short form it’s more fulfilling and inspired than any of the last half-dozen lengthy Depeche Mode albums. But it feels incomplete.

Jacksonville City Nights is a well-lit snapshot of a talented mythmaker modeling his best honky-tonk garb-- and this time, holy shtick, the tailoring is almost impeccable.

Cronin’s dulcet hesitance has given way to slightly meeker delivery. The hooks are there--in the engaging vocal counterpoint to a descending horn line on the bridge of "Say", for instance--but they’re difficult to appreciate.

For what is in essence the ultimate expression of inadequacy, self-loathing, failure, and impotence, 12 Angry Months is a tough little thing.

Though Trap Lord's vision is refracted through split personalities--for better or for worse--A$AP Ferg still sounds like a star in the making.

An endearing collection of pastoral narratives and humble melodies that sounds unearthed from the Gaslight Cafe, where minor folk singers plied their trade and presented their authenticity for analysis in the early '60s.

Dove’s punchy ruefulness benefits from sparkling production by Tom Gorman and Paul Q. Kolderie, with whom Donelly has been working since her time in Throwing Muses.

WLIB AM has a better hit-to-miss ratio than just about any radio station you can name anyways.

A Complicated Woman’s wide-reaching, mollifying remit feels like Taylor trying to be too much to too many people, to live up to the validation that her last album occasioned. Its best moments are the most personal.

With a bloated 60+ minute runtime and some truly misguided dabblings with e-bows and saxophones, Log 22 presents Bettie Serveert at their most self-indulgent. And it's not pretty.

The songs are frustratingly stagnant-- albeit beautiful-- exercises in lap-pop textures.

As with his last two releases, Baby I'm Bored is gutted by under-worked, inconsequential two-minute ideas.

Mostly, From the Desk of Mr. Lady comes off like sub-standard material that didn't make it on to last year's full-length.

She Loves You treats each song differently while still being carefully sequenced so that its tracks cohere into a narrative of love and loss, resulting in a record that manages to sound as if its tracks were the product of one mind.

One part Busta-lite, and the rest full-on skater bravado: Gold Chains isn't going to tear up the world of hip-hop, but he's not totally empty handed.

Their mistake is in forcing too many ideas into every possible second.

As the album progresses... Farrar's lyrics become increasingly stilted and veiled, reverting to the forced wordplay and disconnected evocations of his most obscure songs. In the past, this tendency toward purple opacity could be excused, but on Okemah it hinders Farrar considerably.

While the tight playing and vocal pyrotechnics are impressive, Ditto's narrow lyrical scope gets really redundant.

Some of these feel like scraps and sketches, others like the B-sides they are--which is fine when the scraps are this frequently exciting--but given the range of his output so far, what would be most satisfying would be to get a glimpse of where MacLean's heading next.