The Black Rock succeeds on occasion, but the weight of McCombs' past is a tough load to bear in situations like this.

This is a charity album, released to aid the Isle of Wight Youth Trust, and as such it's a commendable venture. Still, its placing in the New Order discography is hardly likely to be significant, especially as the Live at the London Troxy album from 2011 already documented this incarnation of the group in a live setting.

[“Wall Fuck” is] short and snappy, gone too fast in an album that could’ve been streamlined to let moments like it shine. But maybe it’s the sound of floodgates opening.

Listening to Joe endlessly bombard the listener with rejiggered cliches and breathless streams of imagery and other examples of his lyrical craft, it sounds less like skillful, effortless writing and more like showy, over-considered craftwork.

“Leave the Door Open,” “After Last Night,” and “Smokin Out the Window” are among the highlights, slathering elevated technique—all those key changes—with satisfying molten cheese.

Cummings linked with Topanga Canyon vintage king and session ace Jonathan Wilson, who freed her to focus on not holding back. That is commendable, but it results in an album that has the dynamic range and limited application of a strong flashlight. You recognize its incredible power, but you’d do best not to stare into the source for very long.

Without sufficient songwriting versatility, things can get pretty mediocre and, well, boring by the end of a ten-song album.

It's a wayward journey, which appears to be the intention of the piece, although at times it produces the kind of mixed results you get from opening a novel at a random page and trying to make sense of it.

The story here though is the album's simmering, intimate moments--and despite the fanbase-building qualities of their new-wave past, the more the group embraces an inky, ambient future, the better it could get.

Toeing the line between artful restraint and playing it safe can be difficult, and despite the moments where Lion Babe gets it right, they have a long way to go to set the mood they’re so intent on finding.

Can't Wait Another Day would be easier to love if it didn't keep accidentally signposting a shortage of fresh songwriting ideas.

The final product, then, feels adrift: just off the coast of delivering a discrete emotional impact, offering a sporadic, self-reflexive charm for fans who smile at Dylan’s every left turn, whether in spite of themselves or on principle.

On Big Grams they hit a bit more of a stride.

A restless and sometimes laborious album that attempts to spotlight all of Enslaved's parts in one very overbearing package.

Slow, sugary, and perhaps a little too safe, this is not quite the return that Cinematic fans will want it to be.

The album ends strong, from "America" to closer "Off," but much like most of Royce’s solo catalog, there aren't many songs on Layers that really reward replaying or close listening.

As much as Tidings rides high on it's own brand of sweaty juke-joint appeal, its finest moments are a grab bag of genre detours.

There’s nothing embarrassing here, just a few miscalculations amid some typically strong material, but Mascis has proven that he can muster more joyous ingenuity and imagination than he does on Tied to a Star.

There are moments of considered writing and bursts of Drake at or near his mischievous best, but in its middle, the record becomes inert, making the bits of self-conscious misanthropy scan as strained rather than gleeful, as if the id could be focus-grouped.

World, You Need a Change of Mind certainly isn't a bad album, and the technical execution is first-rate. Its failure is ultimately one of ambition. This is music to be enjoyed while doing something else, not something you fall in love with.

Overall, the half of Beyond Now that focuses on McCaslin’s original material fares far better, and should be sought out by anyone who wants another experience of the invention heard on Blackstar.

The record often leans on familiar garage-rock tropes, so much so that it often dips into homogeneity and predictability. But the band also leaves plenty of room for McKechnie’s booming vocals, by far the band’s most impactful instrument.

In general, Talking to You sounds like an album that is gradually divorcing itself from history and geography, as the Twins learn to build on that West Coast sound to create something unique and personal. They're not there yet, but give them another tour.

The Russian Wilds strives for timelessness, but sounds temporally adrift.

A little more editing and pacing might have made the whole album like this, but given enough time, Triangle has moments of clarity to be found.

Coconut seems to be a "transition album": A sometimes-exhilarating, sometimes-WTF layover between a possibly played-out formula and exciting new sounds on the horizon.

Three albums in, it’s yet to be determined just where the younger Jeffes aims to take the group, but there’s a rigidity to The Imperfect Sea that approaches ordered desolation.

The Errant Charm doesn't entirely succeed in that regard, but it remains a pleasant listen, perhaps just a bit too subliminally so for its own good.

Though it's lightweight, Rewolf gives me a bit of hope that they'll push themselves outward a bit more next time.

It's dense and impressive production work, but not as listenable as Herren at his best.

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

So although Labyrinthes further establishes Malajube as French Canadians worth following, this time you may not make it far enough to save your brother from the Goblin King.

While constant one-liners were a bit leaden on B4.DA.$$, they are sorely missed on AABA.

As the album plays out with its series of sketches that flip between the trivial and contemplative, and as Skepta tussles to find his place in the world, you’re left wondering whether he craves the bliss of youthful innocence or the responsibility of being a voice for a generation. Unfortunately, Ignorance Is Bliss is a deferral, splitting the difference with a series of half-measures.

It’s still a joy to hear the Migos rap, which is why it’s especially depressing that Culture II ultimately feels like a drag--a formless grab bag compiled without much care.

On Bleachers—especially on the singles-heavy first half—the band is simply playing for each other, much to the songs’ benefit.

The second half of Cool Choices can’t match the first in quality or intrigue, but what makes the album as a whole worth listening to is Ghetto’s ability to burrow into a quarry of sentimental abandon and talk about what it feels like to be vulnerable.

Direct Hits proves the Killers have fewer actual hits, let alone great ones, than you thought and makes you wonder if they made their Greatest Hits album too early or whether they can ever legitimately put one together at all.

While Blue is thoughtful and beautiful, it’s a drag to sit through. The interludes have more personality than the full-length songs.

It starts to distinguish itself from its long-established template when the band gets less edgy.

When Bafus isn't pushing from the back, everything falls slack, and the album blurs into gray. Individual moments stand out, but Sholi isn't an album you immerse yourself in as much as notice from time to time.

Here, with one exception, they sound as though they're in soundtrack mode.

Though not without highlights, Not Your Kind of People contains nothing as memorable as their big hits, and it's heavier on the filler than their earlier albums.

The great leaps it takes sometimes feel less like an aesthetic choice and more like the work of someone figuring out where they want to go. It's a cut above most public attempts to undertake such a journey, if indeed that's what Collins is doing.

The songs here are serviceable, thanks to 2 Chainz’s ear and charisma. But they’re more like templates than novel creations, far from his days of sampling Hall & Oates or trading verses with Kendrick Lamar over a Pharrell beat seemingly constructed from cutlery and trash cans.

There was always a tendency to divert into different styles on their prior albums (at least from 12 onward), but always with a feel of continuity underpinning it all, as if each path they took was firmly routing off the same road. Here, their razor-sharp sense of direction feels strangely blunted.

This album, even more than their others, is like a cheap pinata: A lot of candies come out, and a few of them are bound to be stale yellowish things that don't taste like butterscotch.

At the very least, “End of an Era” is a disturbance to Autodrama’s surface-level shimmer and proof of Puro Instinct making an effort to provide depth.

Perhaps the duo is just second-tier to begin with, or perhaps they just let the needle swing too far towards the rock side of the dial, but the peak moments on Scorpio Rising offer little more than enjoyable nostalgia for overhead-projector light shows.

Leave the Light On often considers the toll of living up to expectations, in romantic, platonic, and societal terms. Unfortunately, you also sometimes get the sense of it with regards to following up a beloved album, with the band revealing a new inclination toward gravitas that smothers some of their fire.

Frying on This Rock mostly finds White Hills with their freak flags hoisted well above half mast, with any and all overtures toward coherence obscured by billowing clouds of feedback.

On an album that feels about six minutes long (it's actually just under 29), a couple highlights aren't enough to make it a keeper. But you can't necessarily count the band's new younger focus as a flaw; Velocity of Sound showcases a tight, concentrated power-pop sound that the band seemed to have lost on their last couple outings.

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.

Bigger Love is rife with this feel-good energy, buoyed by his stately voice and easygoing charm, but beneath its positive exterior is an emptiness that’s hard to ignore.

California Nights is a professional album: heavy-ish, filled with hooks, somewhere between "fast enough to dance" and "slow enough to sigh to while looking out of a window."

Dyrdahl never received enough credit for the excellent sound design of his work, and while Sagara seems nothing more than an interesting detour, his careful ear and sense of structure are here in spades.

Missing Satanic Panic's multidimensionality, the album feels like the hollowed-out shell of something great.

“If I May Be So Bold” and “I Will Stay” are sweet songs about determination and devotion, but they lack a certain, well, je ne sais quoi. Carll’s sharpest instincts don’t show here, so it sounds like he’s writing about self-reflection without doing much self-reflecting, solving equations without showing the math.

Edwards often sounds lost in these new songs.

Visiter stands out within their consistently enjoyable catalog for being the least consistent and most surprising—an unalloyed mix of timely African polyrhythms and freak-folk wooliness, bowl-passing ruminations on the existence of God and one-minute shrugs about getting dumped.

Aside from a few bright spots, Rainbow Edition is ultimately a thin record of short, demo-quality beats. Like so many of Hype Williams’ records from the past, this one will feel like a curio or better yet, another reason to ask the question: Who the hell made this?

Awfully Deep makes for churning, menacing background music.

This isn’t a record you crank in traffic en route to an across-town meeting; it’s a record to unwind with later that night on your second glass of Syrah--a sturdy shrug to cap off the day

On good nights, the band conjures a singularly eerie vibe. But on Better Luck Next Life, it's not always coming through.

The album packages a loosened-up (read: defanged), groove-centric sound, infinitely more urbane but so much more boring, too.

While The Melodic Blue is indeed flecked with more intimate writing than usual, it isn’t exactly a confessional. Instead, Keem uses the opportunity to expand his well-established fascination with trap and melody to feature-length—with mixed results.

Idle No More, released in 2013, was his first real adult album, with a real U.S. label and a sound that buffed away some of the rough edges but maintained that sense of the ridiculous. That charisma comes through on Murderburgers, his debut solo record and the first on his own Khannibalism Records (an imprint of Ernest Jenning Co.), although it’s more muted and even more mature.

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.

Too bad the songs aren't as adventurous as the music. This lack of songwriterly imagination severely limits the band's range.

Clutching Stems is a patient, exquisitely produced indie-pop record that never quite makes eye contact.

So, forgive Corgan his infinite lyrical badness, but know that infinity's a lot to forgive.

The Garden sound best at their most upbeat. ... At times, the album can feel erratic. ... However uneven, Kiss My Super Bowl Ring is proudly defiant.

There may be some excellent tracks on this record, but it mostly hints at better things to come down the line.

As a musical statement of intent to the throngs of the newly interested, Music For Men shows a clear picture of who Gossip want to be--a New Millennial Madonna for whom Danceteria never closes. But for those who have been following Gossip's career, waiting with bated breath to see how the band will evolve, this new record may feel a little too much like they are still Standing in the Way of Control.

The album shows that Grubbs’ music and his relationship to pop convention remains as distanced, fitfully frustrating, and stubbornly idiosyncratic as ever.

Punctuating The House’s actual songs are occasionally baffling interludes (one, “Åkeren,” is sung entirely in Norwegian, a first for Porches), which play more like unfinished sketches than intentional moments of quiet.

Results are mixed--"Sun Is on My Side" offers lovely accordion and a weary, haunting refrain, but the midtempo "Uma Menina Uma Cigana" feels flat and perfunctory, while the lugubriousness of "When Universes Collide" actually undermines Hutz's harrowing, poverty-tinged lyrics.

The first half of Boys has all of the action, and the second side can't help but drag a bit.

Sure, the twitchy alienation of their earliest records is long gone, but the Old 97's are still fighting the good fight against respectability.

It’s a little preachy and confessional, but there’s truth in most of what Nash sings about on Girl Talk, at least for the ladies in the room who are still figuring out how to be capital-A adults.

This Machine Kills Artists may not amount to more than an odd itch Osborne felt like scratching, but at least he scratches it with glee.

It can be exquisite in short bursts, but drags a bit over the course of this 16-track album, which is too homogenous in its dreamy, mid-tempo mood to justify its length.

Musically, Tennis have broadened their horizons just the right amount, adding rock'n'roll muscle and a more purely pop clarity.

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

Nature Noir is nothing if not a well-crafted, whip-smart record, but it leaves me yearning for the days when the Stilts would put passion into trying to find the pulse. Or better yet, yearning for the days when the pulse may actually have existed.

End Beginnings shows an understandable desire to crack open the Sandwell District aesthetic, but the album too often struggles to express these ideas with the tyrannical clarity heard on, say, the malignant deep freeze of Function’s Isolation, or Sleeparchive’s Elephant Island, by which O’Connor and Sumner were so influenced.

Ultimately, Brandeis was more valuable and revealing as a bonus disc than as a standalone album.

The songs become repetitive, and though the harmonies are well-crafted and the melodies are lovely, there aren’t enough moments that demand attention. After a while, all the sounds on River of Souls run together, a little bland and verging on formless.

It’s unfortunate that she appears to have doubled down on this habit on her debut album. Often, songs sound more like tributes to her influences than reinventions.

Eat Pray Thug isn’t lacking in ideas, just focus, and there are long stretches where it’s much harder to connect to Heems’ persona.

Number 1 Angel is best at its most vulnerable. ... The other novelty of Number 1 Angel and Charli’s past work is that it showcases, and is largely stolen by, a lot of guests.

O'Connor sounds very relaxed, and ultimately humbled by the ancient material. She resists the temptation to use her vocal tics and affectations; for the most part, she sings the words with a straightforward clarity and reverence.

It's good for what it is--better than it needs to be, in fact--yet what it is is only a fraction of what it could be, if only Earle would stop trying to tidy up his inspirations.

Change is pleasant and breezy, a cozy place where she can explore the outer limits of her voice. Listening can feel like walking into one of those gallery shows with just three sculptures, where everyone is wearing a tweed jacket and a pair of mustard-colored slacks. It sounds cool, and you feel cool listening to it—but that’s about as much as you feel.

A polished assortment of tidily global-sounding, mid-tempo pop tunes that seem to end before they ever kick off, strung together by a checklist of semi-impassioned capital-K Keywords: Youth, Machine, Riot, Fame, Freak, Pirate, Keepers.

It's not that it lacks tension--indeed, almost every song touches on relationship strife--it's just that the squabbles are gentle, the rage subdued.

While Sunday at Devil Dirt may be more of the same (with glimpses of Tom Waits' junkyard blues tossed in to good effect), Campbell and Lanegan were never out to do anything different.