Some of the songs are undercooked, or at least they begin to feel that way as the grooves stretch out past five minutes.

Seems Unfair is full of characters who seem to struggle with everyday minutiae, but Jones throws a magnifying glass on what may seem to more worldly observers like small stakes.... Sometimes his plainspoken quality is too much.

If the objective of this excursion is simply to make a funky, spirited, low-stakes caricature of a dangerous, indomitable industry, though, then the album was worth the wait, the bloat, and the occasional cringe.

Across Hunted’s seven tracks, Calvi contorts her dance along the spectrum of gender and sexuality into something more of a march, stomping between tenderness and brutality.

These detours feel slightly random up against some of the most unadventurous tracks in his catalog, like the smoky ballad “Didn’t Come to Argue.” Like most of his albums, Trying Times could use a little editing, but that’s part-and-parcel of the James Blake package these days.

Harvey remains mostly reverential to his sacrilegious source, but Delirium Tremens is much more than just Gainsbourg fed through Google Translate. Rather, it amplifies the unsettling undercurrents that always stewed beneath Gainsbourg’s impeccable arrangements.

Thorn refuses to see an ending as the end on Record, and the results are wickedly funny and relevant to listeners of all ages.

A byzantine, feverish album that unravels and pieces itself back together song by song, a mind gradually turning inward on itself.

Beyond Bulletproof is the closest Mozzy has come to making his songs accessible.

BBNG can still be frustrating, but IV is a sign of a band hitting its stride. It’s their most jazz-forward album, and it’s filled with some markers of magnificent growth.

While the songs are wildly improved, I still can't say there's much of a discernible identity.

There's a limp, mostly-constructed skeleton of a great rock record here, and maybe that's exactly what it's meant to be.

If They Live in My Head lacks the woozy danceability of vintage Tetras, it doesn’t skimp on the political bite.

Even as life interferes, you can imagine the album as a flight of whiskey: subtle variations on one recipe, pure fun to consume, liable to intensify one’s desire to punch cops. Very occasionally, the production is countryfied to achieve a spaghetti western vibe, or larded with Halloween pedal effects.

Forgiveness Rock Record's thematic bent is mature, and that sense of gravity is embedded into the music, too.

Music, Trial & Trauma is several albums at once: drill bangers, party tunes, and a series of reflections on Black tragedy. It doesn’t always cohere, but the effect is still rather startling. Loski illuminates the darkened corners of his mind in order to reveal the society that gives power to the demons inside.

The music on Garden Gaia is inspired by the idea of Earth as a self-regulating system, and it’s heartening in that context to hear Weber let his machines fall into disrepair. But Garden Gaia sounds best when they’re swallowed up entirely.

A record with infernally catchy dance-pop hooks and the nutritional value of cotton candy.

The Wild Things soundtrack boasts enough illuminating, atypical turns from Karen O that make it worth experiencing independent of its source.

All in all, Castlemania is a fairly loose and scattered record.

Whether or not Iron & Wine and Calexico ever choose to follow this up with another collaboration (fingers crossed), it's clear that both acts are stronger for having worked with the other.

Some Racing, Some Stopping is the kind of record, in other words, that you'd expect casual listeners to enjoy and critics to unfairly malign.

Saltwater is a pretty record and the songs are clearly heavy with personal significance, but it was almost better when they were a little rough around the edges.

Like Blackalicious' recent The Craft, it displays a real hard-earned competency, something a decade of recording together will get you. But the lyrics lack transcendence or resonance.

Death After Life gets a little cute here and there (cf. the extended roboseizure freakout outro to "III"), and it starts to lose a little steam near the end, when the downtempo digression of "VI" and the hopped-up yet unsurprising "VII" roll towards the official conclusion.

The scope and ambition of Morning/ Evening is profound, and will hopefully inspire producers to take bigger chances and not be satisfied with pop- or club-friendly lengths. Even where Morning/Evening doesn't quite work, it's daring and expansive.

Bigger Than Life takes Black Marble aboveground, where some songs bloom, while others struggle to adjust to the daylight after so long in the shadows.

The arrangements are lean and pared back, even as the lyrics erupt with florid descriptions that feel like direct entreaties to the senses.