Iggy's delivery is too wry to exude rage, the songs rarely rise above a mid-tempo chug, and Mackay's jovial sax blurts are way more roadhouse than Funhouse.

The music is more unmemorable than bad, though occasionally Gonzalez's inexperience, which seems to limit what Trapanese can do as well, shows.

Perhaps Baba Yaga might’ve been more digestible if it had lost two or three songs. But for Futurebirds, the rough spots are kind of the whole point.

Like 90s pop stars turned 10s pop sophisticates Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé, Charli XCX stamps her personality across the entire project, and True Romance suggests she'll be worth following for a while.

It’s no slight to say nothing on Ultramarine matches its opening triad--not much does. The remainder of it is solid, though it shows a band still using established pop framework in lieu of a personality.

Sky Burial will likely land as one of the year’s great breakthroughs for a heavy act.

While improving on the sheer sound of Ghost Blonde on nearly every level, No Joy are still more suggestive than declarative.

Too much of it is an ill-advised cultural safari that’s too weird to fly but too monied to fail. But where it succeeds, Reincarnated forces you to forget the principal ridiculousness of the enterprise, and that is no small feat.

For the curious listener, the definitive nature of Illumination Ritual can cut both ways, as Appleseed Cast demonstrate their capabilities without having too many definitive strengths come to the fore, consolidating a decade and a half of intriguing, and occasionally compelling experimentation into a manageable 45 minutes.

Ultimately, Junip keep their distance, offering a comforting hand on your shoulder rather than a full and unreserved embrace.

The flaw here is that all these songs together are too much to absorb, but Miller probes deeply without ever coming off as sappy, skillfully weaving through breakups, self-loathing, skipping school, and poor decisions without sticking to his own sadsack introspection.

[V feels] both transitional and incubatory.

Mars is too amiable a vocalist to express pure disillusionment, but he’s great at communicating discomfort. Bankrupt! doesn’t so much ruefully reflect upon Phoenix’s whirlwind, globe-trotting lifestyle as drop you right in the middle of it.

The album shows that Grubbs’ music and his relationship to pop convention remains as distanced, fitfully frustrating, and stubbornly idiosyncratic as ever.

The perfectly pleasant Rat Farm [feels] strangely wanting.

Too often it sounds as though Beam is less interested in defining a new sound and more concerned with distancing himself from an old one.

That A Quiet Darkness doesn’t offer much in the way of immediate pleasure shouldn’t be entirely to its detriment, but this album doesn’t grow on you; it wears on you.

[Producer Nick] Raskulinecz brightens the band until the mystery and suspense disappear, turning these evil thoughts into baubles that sound safe enough for big money and rock radio.

It’s all about context with Live: each moment is a build to and release from the next.

Twelve Reasons is generous comfort food for Ghost's fanbase, a group slowly being whittled away by time and creeping indifference.

Unfortunately, at least in the narrative that Top of the Pops spins, everything that followed Bang Bang Rock & Roll did so with increasingly unbecoming shades of bitterness. They'd have been better off reissuing Bang Bang for a second time than opting to tell this glum take on events.

Excavation gains power from gathering a little dust for a while, becoming a dark treat to occasionally sink into.

Call of the Void are no exception, and they're proving that Denver is a hotbed of serious vitrol and passion.

If it doesn’t quite show the knack for experimentation and variety hinted at via Inspiration, Wings is a quietly amazing document of Otis’ doggged determination over the quarter century between leaving the business and the first Inspiration reissue.

Desperate Ground is a record that really wants to convey having something to say and Harris has run out of ways to say that something.

A no-brainer, easy-to-enjoy production slate gets knocked around by its flaws just enough that even the minor, acquired-taste touches seem like just another bad decision.

The trio unlearns everything that distinguished them as instrumentalists on snakes, ending up with something that’s more entertaining when seen as a potential document of alternate history.

At times the duo are guilty of excessive portentousness, but there are just as many moments where their grandiose ambitions are convincingly realised.