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.

Imagin shines whenever it isn't contorting to fit preconceived notions of format.

After its auspicious start, The Dew Last an Hour tries to convey similar sentiments amid agreeable, midtempo synth-pop that skimps on the pop and piles on the twinkling, harmonized guitars and vaporous melodies. What begins as a cooling blast of fresh air dissipates into pleasant ambience.

If you're inclined to Tennis negatively, they look like a group of blank people offering bland sweetness devoid of deeper meaning. While the band might've fit that description at one point, they've since grown past it, so if you're one of the listeners who dismissed their earlier work as banal and bourgeois, know that Tennis has since earned another chance.

With The Physical World, Grainger and Keeler haven’t entirely scratched the itch they instigated a decade ago. But they’ve learned to live with the burn, and that’s the next best thing.

Commonwealth as a whole is that of a noble failure. It's an interesting experiment, albeit less fulfilling than the band's best and recent work--but quality and relative position within their deep catalog aside, the album's very existence is heartening.

It’s all the more disappointing that, despite the rawness of these recordings and the private nature of their creation, O sounds weirdly noncommittal on Crush Songs, as though the sparse demo arrangements were a form of holding back.

Avi Buffalo are trying and failing to act their age on At Best Cuckold, and ain’t nothin’ wrong with that either.

His process of filtering out the bad has failed him on Adrian Thaws, leaving an album that bears both his names but offers less of himself than ever before.

Banks could certainly go places--but Goddess doesn't, and instead seems content to wallow in the same depressive rut for an exhausting 59 minutes.

This album sounds best in the context of the Hiss Golden Messenger catalog--as a comment on and a celebration of the spiritual and creative toil on the previous albums.

If not all of Lullaby’s fusion experiments succeed, there’s enough inspired alchemy here to earn Plant the right to bring it on home.

Even as she treads upon dead earth, Castle’s connection to nature is potent as ever: with Pink City, she reminds us of how good it feels to be alive, even when life gets in the way.

On Ores & Minerals, there was a measure of spaciness that’s been lost here, perhaps surprisingly considering the circumstances of its birthing. If that album was a leap, this one is a step, and a gingerly one at that.

With El Pintor, Interpol don’t sound as much like Interpol as they do a band that really wants to be Interpol; it’s a sad notion for anyone who once held this band’s music dear to their hearts, but taking into account what came before, it’s a miracle that Interpol still exist in this capacity at all.

Parry's writing is shimmering, jewel-like.

Even though Anchor is a truly disappointing work from such an inventive mind, it’s not enough to suggest that he’s reached the point of creative bankruptcy.

Seen It All: The Autobiography doesn’t deliver on either one of its titular promises.

Earth have seemed overdue for a change, and these songs collectively represent a promising half-step toward it.

In A Dream is Maclean and Whang's most fruitful, balanced partnership, and if it fails to truly make a star out of either of them, it cements them as the kind of ever-evolving collaboration DFA was built on.

For all their reverence toward the past, Bitchin Bajas know how to live in the present--there’s no knowing distance here--so at its best, Bitchin Bajas doesn’t give you ideas about sounds, but the sounds themselves.

It seems almost unfair, though, to criticize Gallab for the minor crime of engaging with a sound that’s not as inherently interesting as what he’s proven capable of elsewhere, as Mean Love cements his reputation as a capable musical wanderer willing to engage with a variety of sounds.

YOB’s latest record stands as one of their densest, so it's good that the band's greatest asset, their impeccable pacing, remains intact.

In essence, Overjoyed is the sound of the Fairs playing along with themselves, or at least the sweet, weird boys they used to be--not always with as much spark or chaos, but mashing up the fruits just as gleefully.

Four years later, though, all Blonde Redhead has to show for its lengthy studio hiatus is another too-obvious bauble.

It’s fun, sure, but it’s also thrillingly restless, at times almost desperate.

10 Summers closes with four R&B tracks—two songs and two interludes, all of which act almost as palette cleansers after the unrelenting hardness of the previous eight numbers.

Melodies coast, but they don’t always stick; everything’s too mannered, too clean, and the album is marred by a clinicality further punctuated by its bonus tracks.