There's a sweetly consistent mood throughout; it’s something you can put on and treat as ambient sound, but there’s also a clever subtlety in their process.

The main weakness is the same one found on Crazy Clown Time: the songs. As songs, they don’t do much or say much.

Joey too often comes out looking like someone who’s already grown weary of the system, an 18-year-old curmudgeon, a sharp contrast with the energy that 1999 promised.

Time Off’s biggest asset is its ease. There’s a real sense, listening to these tracks, that everything could be a little simpler if we all stopped trying so hard.

Every song on this album could stand to be tightened. Most could lose a verse or two, and a lot of them would sound much better if they were played faster.

With its quaking rhythms, twisted riffage, and jet-black wit, Major Arcana is a redemptive ode to the broken bones that grew back together a little crooked--the ones that taught Dupuis how to walk in her own weird way.

Southeastern is easily Isbell’s best solo album--his most richly conceived and generously written. If it’s not quite the album that lives up to his considerable talents, it’s mostly the music that’s to blame.

Ciara feels slightly (though only slightly) weaker when she swims against the current of her own charm and tries for “raw.”

Though repetitive, the record is consistently engaging, with plenty of distinct highlights.

Style trumps niche every time here, and in its efficiently compact sub-hour runtime there's plenty of opportunity to let that style run through all kind of territory.

While All Hell felt imbued with danger and intrigue, on Me Moan, the people pulled off to highway shoulder are never in any real distress upon closer inspection. They just stepped out to check a map.

It would sound overproduced for 1998 yet seems curiously rinky-dink compared to the current pop maximalism of any continent; Scott & Rivers splits most of its time between ruthlessly utilitarian power pop and midtempo, jangly acoustic alt-rock that reimagines the break between Pinkerton and the Green Album as one where Cuomo ditched Harvard for higher education in the form of Stroke 9 or Eve 6 CDs.

Without Your Love ends up becoming a loose survey of Dexter's work instead the Nihjgt Feelings statement he intended it to be.

Rather than dour, however, the album sounds concerned, perhaps even worried, which illuminates even some of its weaker or seemingly extraneous tracks. It focuses Pollard, who sounds like a man who has said so much already but still has so much left to say.

On The Dusted Sessions they both deconstruct and reinforce the tenets of Americana and make something transcendent in the process.

The weirdly distant and safe Magna Carta Holy Grail abides by the tried and true business principle that the customer is always right: you just have to remember who the customer is here.

Occasionally plodding, and too ruminative by half, Anarchic Breezes is a journey in need of a destination, stuck between staring at the sun and gazing thoughtfully at its own navel.

Yeah, it's a fun album, and it's probably the most affable thing they've done so far together. But don't take that for a weakness.

Unfortunately, on Planta, they only seem half-awake.

Despite its clever syntheses, there are times when it's not much more than pretty. But the good is not only good, it's promising.

Hanging Gardens is a decadent trifle to lose yourself in, a deceptively simple record that has the potential for great longevity.

The album is at its best when Jones delivers brisk, bright rock with endearing hooks... Things begin to lag when Jones drops the tempo and tries his hand at balladry.

There's potential in The Visitor's mix of electro, new wave, and pop, but it's obscuring or distorting Aguayo's personality, which is the engine that has driven his songs for so long.

The music on The Gifted sounds fantastic, with intricately arranged keys and strings, stacks of soul and gospel-inspired backup vocals, and deep, rubbery bass lines. The problem is that Wale and his team made a really decent soul rap album without a rapper soulful enough to carry it.

Stelmanis has said she listened to a lot of early Cat Power while recording Olympia, and while nothing here sounds anywhere near as stark, the lyrics often do, and lead appropriately tense, nervy sounding songs.

Their search for large-scale anthems and keenness to replicate a formula that doesn’t come naturally to them leaves them sounding boxed in, and imbuing Heart of Nowhere with all the grace and flexibility of four concrete pillars.

One True Vine tarries too long in doubt before finally breaking that dour spell and inviting the listener in on the celebration.

It updates the IDIB sound without losing its buzzy neon charm, which remains a hugely attractive mode.