Perhaps it’s deliberate that throughout The Take Off and Landing of Everything, hardly anything truly takes off. Instead the album dangles there, an effortlessly leaden exhibition of glum triumphalism--and an example of what makes Elbow, at its least potent, so subtly unsubtle.

It doesn't matter if Gibbs and Madlib were once considered artists playing to different audiences--united in their uncompromising, independent-as-fuck visions, they put together something hardcore hip-hop heads on both sides should feel.

If Rise of an Empire is meant to read like some kind of State of the Union address, it paints Young Money as a fractured team that’s lost its compass.

Yes, this music gets dull--it’s supposed to. I can’t imagine listening to it all the time for the same reasons I can’t imagine trying to cook an entire meal using only a garlic press. But in their limited pursuits Bohren captures a mood other music either struggles to or just doesn’t bother with: Not sadness (too acute), not angst, but a sumptuous, all-purpose melancholy.

Within its limits, the album is fairly diverse, though after so many records, the style might be wearing a bit thin.

It’s an album that humorously but honestly explores the tensions that arise in any long-term relationship, however in this case, the pressures--financial, political, or otherwise--seem to be coming more from without than within.

If you’ve been fascinated by any of Stallones’ work, Belomancie will get you stoked about not only what he’s done, but how much more he can do.

Many of Glow's songs are just-there, but a few manage to be engaging.

Kindly Bent to Free Us works as a sort of retroactive insult: It resurrects many of the misgivings people have always had about Cynic--the overindulgent vocals, for instance, or the ponderous new-age musings--and runs wild with them.

Doubled Exposure is a fun, chewy listen as it spins, but there’s also nothing too sticky about it.

Although it makes no apologies for the bits and pieces it takes from her contemporaries, No Mythologies to Follow doesn't work because it assembles the right ingredients in the right amount--it works because a likable persona is something you just can't teach.

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.

Eagulls have synthesized their influences well, and have created an enjoyable rock record (they've been around since 2010, which may account for why so many of these songs sounds accomplished as they do); so while Eagulls is not exactly life-changing music, the songs stick with you, and sometimes that's enough.

If only the rest of the record caught on to that out-front force--the words on Love Letters might scan as more than lonely fridge-magnet poetry, the beats might feel like more than just placeholders, and the music could be something to dance to instead of just drift off to.

The stiffly prefabricated industrial-dance grooves that Laibach habitually fall back on don't quite cut it any more, and without a monolithic state to serve as the object of their satire, they're reduced to mocking political fatuity.

While nothing here qualifies as any kind of radical reinvention of the indie-rock wheel per se, the band manages to astutely put their own spin on it, seemingly figuring out their own sizable strengths in the process.

While the immaculately blended pop smoothie that is G I R L goes down easy, its complacency is disappointing.

The best moments are when the song forms fracture a little, and Perhacs' multi-tracked voice is allowed to spiral free.

Aside from its appropriate feel for a good time get-down in a surprisingly cheerful cartoon post-apocalypse, it's hard to get any real emotional connection from these cuts.

Guilty of Everything is loud, it’s distorted and it’s heavy, but it’s not aggressive. It’s actually quite comforting.

The moments where Mastermind gives us William Roberts the man instead of Rick Ross the gangster flick composite character with the borrowed name are scarce, and he remains committed to dialing in good life platitudes that increasingly ring hollow.

The Satanist is a terrific coil of most everything Behemoth have ever done well, a strangely hopeful vision of hell wrested away from its very grip.

Cooley’s superlative performance on English Oceans would be more worthy of celebration if it wasn’t negated by Hood’s most non-committal songwriting to date.

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 net result of the half-thoughts that make up the patten mythos throw the music into a certain light, depending on how it's received.

Who knows if the Men would be energized or completely lost if they took more time next time out, but Tomorrow’s Hits for now mostly succeeds in toeing the line between being on a roll and being in a rut.

It’s disappointing that these songs don’t have the bones to stand on their own, especially since a precedent for truly great Major Lazer songs exists.

Ava Luna are an exhilarating live band, and Electric Balloon is the first thing they've done that comes close to bottling that energy.