Even though a release like Lady, Give Me Your Key unearths never-before-heard material, it still doesn’t reveal anything new about the mercurial man.

Alegrias is a pleasant stylistic diversion, another in a long series of non-revelations. That's Gelb's appeal: a guy, a thoughtful guy, who won't press you into adoration, even when he deserves it.

While it’s easy to get the gist of every song on Indigo, Tatum never sets an actual mood.

Mice Parade still finds Pierce working in a distinctive space, less jazzy than fellow post-rock vets the Sea & Cake but more atmospherically nuanced than typical acoustic singer/songwriters, but it's hardly the most appropriate release to bear the Mice Parade name.

Despite the burst of creativity that inspired it, No Rules Sandy lacks urgency. The songs that do sharpen into concrete images evaporate rather than carry their metaphors forward.

The Libertines may be running low on originality, but they can still produce a strong tune when the muse strikes.

hile he become incrementally more skilled over the years, not much else has changed. Throughout I Decided., Sean conflates the passing of time with growth and progress. Nothing on I Decided., however, suggests that he has gained perspective worth sharing or to which he should devote a whole album.

Instead of following his darker impulses or fantastically out-there indulgences, Coombes plays it safe.

There are glimmers, in the various half-ideas that surface throughout No Ghost, of a vision that the band could have taken and run with. Klausener's lyrics can be appealingly morbid.

This new record is a more favorable look at the 00s Chemical Brothers than its predecessor, and its 2xCD version features a better bonus disc than the 2003 model.

Isles has sparkling moments but it’s all a bit constrained, like a potted plant on a window sill that craves the natural wildness of a garden.

His albums are very much the work and vision of one man, and so even on a relatively easygoing outing like Innocence Reaches, that insularity can grow stifling. It’s as if since Barnes can’t escape his own head, he won’t allow listeners to, either.

Such persistent tonal shifts theoretically suit the lyrics well, but they lack oomph and often set the duo's songs to meandering when sharper contrasts might've been genuinely thrilling.

Buffalo Daughter produce exceptional-sounding tracks that cover a wide spectrum of genres, texture and mood; they perform well on a variety of instruments, and their voices blend nicely most of the time. But they don't write great songs-- too often, they don't even write good ones.

While the jagged edges of “This Is Why” establish a jittery energy to match Williams’ punctuated belting on the chorus, songs like “C’est Comme Ça” draw too closely from their inspirations. ... Once they shake off their millennial discontents, Paramore find their groove in the record’s second half.

Love Is Dead is admirably righteous, but it’s chilly, lacking the rallying impact of peers who have shown that empathy is more powerful than polemic.

Syndrome Syndrome offers some rewards, but it may have been a fraction too soon for them to make their first move.

This is the early-hours sound you nod off to, not the one that has you second guessing what you heard.

Expectedly, the longest lost tracks (talking '95, '96) are the most amateurish.

Though worthy, at times enjoyable, and well-intentioned, as a standalone work it’s uneven and hemmed in. Its greatest tribute will be to lead listeners back to the source.

Historical importance aside, they're a band built on unreliability and inconsistency, and This Is PiL maintains that reputation.

As it is, it feels like dead patches make up almost half of Chopped & Screwed. Shelve it next to the Knife's Tomorrow, in a Year as an effort that hearteningly shows an inspired artist staking out bold terrain, but one that only fitfully delivers the impact of the artist's previous, pop-focused work.

Caroline Polachek fares best of all Harle’s features; in both “Azimuth” and “On and On,” she iterates a dancefloor diva more at home at Camelot than, say, either the Paradise Garage or Pacha, and Harle really sounds like he’s having fun honoring her commitment to the bit. Other vocals fail to emulsify.

None of these covers is quite as transformed as “Jezebel”, so nothing on Strange Weather delivers the same subversive charge. Partly that’s due to her choice in material, which for the most part is recent and more indie-oriented.

Huncho Jack’s liveliness tends to come from everywhere except Quavo and Travis Scott. The protean energy that buoy their respective works are sadly absent.

Through all of this chaotic history, DJ Premier is trying to patch together an album that will pass the smell-test, and he does a decent job. Anyone who held out this long for a Gang Starr album will likely be pleased with the results.

Perhaps this release is their own way of dispensing with some lingering ghosts before moving on to something new.

On Falling Off the Lavender Bridge, Hynes offers a comfortable (and more interesting) marriage of lush Brit-pop and Omaha-flavored country-rock.

It's to Kelis' boundless credit that she can make the twee screw of “Floyd” or the passive attack trip-hop of “Runnin” feel warmly human just by doing her best to overpower it--even as the music tries, and nearly succeeds, in overpowering her.

Persona lacked the natural fluidity and chicness of their best music. Those problems aren’t exactly mitigated here, since most of those songs appear on this album too, but within this new context, they feel like a flashback before the saga continues. Many of the new songs are better about balancing Easter eggs for day-ones with new entry points for more casual listeners.

Harlequin is an odd album with perplexing priorities and a conflicted sense of scale, but just enough sweetness and heart to make you want to give it the benefit of the doubt anyway.

Swift has figured out how to make pretty music, but he hasn't found anything compelling to say through it.

For the first time in Atmosphere's long career, the stakes feel low, and Southsiders feels both pleasant and noncommittal, like it isn't even convinced of its own right to exist.

Taken as a whole, it’s hard to imagine the audience who enjoys every corner of this album. It’s even harder to imagine the artist Morris really wants to be.

Songs like “Automatic” and “Mon Amour,” meant to feel airy and perfumed, wind up coughing on their own musk. Ware’s adherence to such rigid disco blueprints also has the knock-on effect of making her voice sound less remarkable than it actually is.

The result is never less than amiable, but it also tends to slide past, like a pleasant daydream or an afternoon shadow.

A modest record of modest aims from a songwriter coming to terms with his current station.

The diversity of sound the band rolls out on Pe’ahi is certainly refreshing, but it takes a chunk out of the foundation of their career.

All Harm Ends Here is hushed and apocryphal, but at times it sounds almost as half-hearted as it is heavy-hearted.

The Human Fear isn’t provocative enough to revitalize their reputation, but it certainly won’t do it any harm.

When left to his own devices—as on the chopped-and-screwed “Roll” and the Jersey club-indebted “Pure Gold”--Girl Unit rests on formerly niche sounds that have been adopted by more mainstream-facing artists.

With better lyrics and a longer attention span, McKay would be a jaw-dropping songwriter, but it's difficult to get sucked into a song if you don't connect with the singer.

It would have been fascinating to see him apply those gifts more fully to writing about life as he searches for peace in middle age and refinds his voice after falling silent. Instead, Get Sunk feels like a missed opportunity.

The monotonous stretches of this concert package make it difficult to feel anything about him at all. The proceedings lack a transporting element; if this disc is playing while one is stuck in traffic, one will feel very much stuck in traffic.

This album often sounds like a studio-crafted simulacrum of a full-band performance, every element a bit too polished.

Nothing about Timeline is bad. It's a pretty strong release for a brand new imprint to build on. But if the same record were released from, say, Stones Throw, we might sigh, and chalk it up to another good-but-not-great album from a label that still hasn't quite figured out a unified new direction.

Even if this album plays hard to get, there's plenty to love for those willing to listen.

The Chuck Berry template rears its head, for better and worse, throughout Chuck.

What follows is a musical of sorts wedged into the gut of the album.... This digression is conceptually ambitious, but the execution seems to purposefully undercut the exercise, as if the suite was the result of an argument between a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other about what the album should accomplish that was won by neither.

If anything, Scott’s romantic instincts are accentuated in an unprecedented way on Out of All This Blue because so much of this lengthy album is devoted to love songs.

After nailing the rapid-fire EP format with tracks that constantly threatened to disintegrate themselves from the inside-out, TPC psyche themselves out on their first full-length, over-cooking songs made from otherwise spectacular ingredients.

Because its overt politics now feel so inadequate, Warzone works best as a melancholy gesture, a long look back at a time when dreaming of a better world felt invigorating rather than exhausting.

There’s something sadly anonymous about Sunlit Youth. It’s cloudy, distant, and inert when it should be effervescent.

To paraphrase the great Roy Kent, real love should make you feel like you’ve been struck by lightning. 6LACK manages some sparks here and there, but the tingles fade fast.

Contrary to what some have claimed, They Were Wrong is listenable, and intentionally so: the band frequently finds ways to successfully straddle the fence between form and noise... though most of the time, it's admittedly impenetrable and alienating.

The Man Upstairs has warmth and charm galore, but it needs someone, anyone, reaching down to more strongly pull the strings.

It’s too bad the rest of the record can’t match its ["Madonna"] energy. Still, even as a series of sketches and fragments, Ricky Music captures the essence of a breakup album.

But the album ultimately feels like a status update, never really probing or conveying why freedom is so important to Offset.

The eccentric versus the consummate professional; the maverick versus the safe bet. Yet for an album called Hyperdrama, actual tension—the kind of friction that once made Justice’s music feel so vital—is otherwise frustratingly hard to find.

Rain Before Seven… is designed to feel hopeful and positive, reassuring rather than challenging: music for the world that should or could be, rather than the grim reality. But it’s ultimately a vision of a heaven where nothing much happens.

Jeezy is mostly comfortable doing the same things he’s always done and letting others take the leaps. But times are changing and Jeezy is still clearly struggling to adapt to them.

When, on “The Same Again,” she sings, “Move slow when you speak, so you really get to say what you’re meaning,” sounding as if her face is scrunched into a grimace, she turns a fairly oblique phrase into a razor-sharp barb. These moments, although far between, suggest that A New Reality Mind could have been a more dynamic record if it had zeroed in on Kenney’s intentional, suggestive performances.

The result is a little absent-minded, with the difference split between gleeful assertion and wanton noodling, the type of album that might sound best when you’re thinking about something else.

Faith in the Future is a character-driven record, even if it doesn’t restore Finn to the heights of his mid-2000s heyday.

Ending with a brief, queasy reprise tease of 'Wrong,' Sounds of the Universe concludes anticlimactically, an echo of its promising start.

It makes sense that, at almost an hour, it wants to make good on fulfilling its feature-length ambitions, though even the most devout midnight movie synth-pop fans will still find it a bit much.

We toggle across this record between the same core sounds—crisp acoustic guitar, modular synths, analog drum machines, and Margaret’s alto. In some instances, these ingredients render a feast, and in others, barely a 7/11 haul.

For an artist who has undergone so many identity experiments before her debut, Soft Control is a promising, if not groundbreaking, beginning.

The key to Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s most successful music is balance, and while the band struggles to recapture some of their old magic, Huntley finds that same sweet spot in his lovingly unromantic storytelling.

So 'Em Are I is a frontloaded album. But anyone who ever bought a Sebadoh record despite really liking only Lou Barlow's songs should still consider checking it out.

What ultimately saves Snowflake Midnight from following The Secret Migration up the band's collective keister is the song positioned to serve as its climax, 'Dream of a Young Girl as a Flower.'

Listening to Music to Draw to: Satellite, it’s hard not to wish that Koala would lean just a bit more on his core skills, though there’s admittedly something admirable about his willingness to be seen as a novice, rather than a master.

Though they'd likely see a frighteningly short life span in a place like Brooklyn, this music remains endearing for reasons that have little to do with their record collections. Intangibles.

This band knows how to break new ground, yet they sound as though they’re trying to summon songs that will miraculously slot in with their old material. It’s a balancing act that’s holding them back.

Nothing on the album sounds exactly like Oasis—it’s all too controlled and studio-sculpted—but not a song here would’ve been imaginable without the Gallaghers’ enthusiastic embrace of classic rock tropes.

Kamaal the Abstract is not a great record by any means. But it is an interesting one, a unique effort by an artist struggling to mesh two disparate musical systems, gambling that inherent internal friction could spark some excitement.

Otherwise, all these nested layers of samples and beats and propaganda wrap infinitely around a hollow core, making for excitable music that eventually collapses into boredom.

While a few songs here could be Chromeo canon, Adult Contemporary too often feels like a glossy recreation of their earlier sound that’s missing the idiosyncrasy and baked-in humor.

Threads makes an admirable case for the continued survival of “L.A” as synecdoche and pension plan. The remakes comprise the album’s least compelling section.

Making the Saint is a refined yet minor record that works as an intimate aperture into the subtle wonders of Schlarb’s catalog.

Wood$ does an excellent job of creating a chilled-out vibe--the kind of music that could soundtrack any setting, whether it’s time to club or wind down. That’s a fine quality to have, but there’s a sense that something deeper is tucked beneath the layers of his brand of trappy R&B.

It's an impeccably polished and careful record. But like a shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck, sophistication can wear a guy out.

The album does offer the listener the high-quality mix CD that techno purists have long suspected Speedy J could deliver.

For an album recorded primitively inside a Nashville box, there are some stunning performances on A Letter Home.... Occasionally, though, the recording quality distracts from the album's content.

In the context of Wire's catalog, this is just another document of incremental change, and not even the best live recording they've made lately (that would be their gorgeous Daytrotter session from 2008).

Many tracks come off as retreads or ideas freeze-dried for consumption at the trio's famous exhaustingly intense live shows.

Whiskey Tango Ghosts stays satisfied, to the point of sounding undifferentiated.

Ontario Gothic is certainly part of a great story; but as a perfectly satisfying half hour of modest and common dream-pop, it's not much of a story on its own.

The Messenger won't be included in the body of work that made Marr great, but it's a solid approximation of his strengths.

Newcombe is a master at turning the minimal into maximal, layering myriad swirling textures into a dizzying head-rush of a tune (see: "Seven Kinds of Wonderful"), but crafty production only takes him so far.

Like their namesake, Melted Toys’ willfully warped nature can get in the way of their utility.

While they've made great use of deconstructive syntax, repetition, gibberish, and in-jokes in the past, too much of Relax simply feels like dead air.

Vile certainly has the talent and ability to churn out tunes, and with a little focus and editing his best batch is most likely ahead of him.

Volume II is like an unnecessary b-sides compilation.... Nonetheless, the album has its high points.

Chant Darling doesn't hit strike that balance often enough, and very few of these songs allow such a glimpse of the musician behind them. Ultimately, Lawrence Arabia's carefully tailored influences have the same effect as that stage name, as if Milne was intent on absenting himself from his own album.

Silversun Pickups tap into a well of quarantine-bound inspiration that results in some of their most varied and carefree songs in over a decade, even if the majority overstay their welcome.

With their new album, Maxïmo Park avoid both utter disaster and absolute success by playing it safe. Nice and safe.

As beautifully assembled as parts of Seaside Rock are, a couple of genre-specific tracks underscore its stopgap nature.